A Fate Greater Than Life
by sparagus
Summary: Bella moves to Forks; her world is turned upside down by unspeakable forces. Edward is stunned by her arrival, confused by flashbacks she triggers in his mind. Is it possible that the strangers share a past bigger than imaginable? ON HOLD for now.
1. Chapter 1 Deja Vous

**Summary: Bella moves to Forks; her world is turned upside down by strange mysteries, unspeakable forces. Edward is stunned by her arrival, confused by flashbacks she triggers in his mind. Is it possible that the strangers share a past bigger than imaginable? AU**

**Rated T for now. :)**

**Chapter 1-Deja Vous**

**Bella's POV**

"Now, Bella, are you sure about this, baby? You don't have to do this, you know." Even as she spoke the words, my mother's face was anxious—hoping that I'd stick to my original intentions of leaving Phoenix and, by proxy, her and my new step-father, Phil, to live with my father in the great state of Washington.

My new life was sure to be quite the opposite of the old. I loved Phoenix, the desert, the sun, the heat. I loved the city, and dirt, and dry air, and if I were completely honest with myself, I would just admit it—that I was already homesick beyond what any words could express, and I hadn't even left the driveway yet.

"No, Mom. It'll be great."

Great. Right. Forks, Washington. So many words flooded my mind in connection to the town of my birth, but 'great' was not one of them. Small. Isolated. Green. Wet. Rain. Cold. As I said, quite the opposite of my current—or rather, my now former—home. I pushed those thoughts from my mind; I had a great deal of time ahead of me to contemplate them while I traveled to the engulfing forests of Washington.

"Be safe." My mom was near tears, though I doubted it would take long for her to get over them. She and Phil would be leaving in a little less than five hours for Florida—Phil would be attending spring training for baseball for the next month.

"I will, Mom. I'll call you when I get there." I forced a smile for her.

She nodded as I kissed her cheek, feeling somewhat numb inside. I made my way to the driver's side of my car and hopped in, waving, and with nothing left to do, I drove away without looking back. Tears didn't come, not as I drove through the Arizona desert or the California hills. I spent the night in Redding, California, when I couldn't force my eyes open any longer. Very early the next morning, I was on my way again, and the closer I came to Forks, the greener my surroundings became. After driving just over a total of fifteen hundred miles and drinking more ounces of coffee than I could count, I arrived in the small town.

I cringed as I followed my Mapquest printout of directions to my father's house. It was smaller than I remembered it—two-story, but quaint, white, and very plan. No flowers, no personal touches.

I sighed as I pulled toward the curb behind Charlie's police car; he was the chief of police for a five-person police force. I'd always admired my dad. He was strong and protective, and though neither of us was too terribly open about our feelings, I loved him, and he always was sure to be a part of my life, even from afar. Charlie had made it a point to fly to Phoenix for my birthday each year, and he had always called me at least twice a week for a chat.

My dad was out of the front door of the house before I was out of the door of my car. He grinned as he took long strides down the sidewalk.

"Bells! How was the drive?"

In spite of my sour mood, I smiled, and we embraced in an awkward, very Swan-like hug.

"Long," I grumbled.

He chuckled. "Well, I would have bought you a car for here so you could have flown, Bells, but you insisted on bringing this beast." He patted the hood of the car.

I gaped at him and soothingly ran a hand over the top of where his had just hit. "Dad," I warned. "She is not a beast. She's my baby." I almost cooed that last sentence as I looked at her lovingly.

He laughed again, amusement dancing in his brown eyes. "Yeah, okay. Well, I'm glad you made it safely. And glad you're here, Bells."

I smiled at him, forgetting how nice it was to be around him, his mellow personality and calm demeanor—so very different from my mom. For a moment, I forgot all about how much I missed her, how much I missed home.

"Thanks, Dad," I grabbed my two bags that I'd brought with me and opted for leaving the two boxes of books in my backseat to bring in later.

Charlie immediately took both bags from me, and I mumbled another thank you.

"You hungry, kid? I ordered some pizza 'bout an hour ago."

"No, not really. I grabbed some dinner a couple of hours ago. I think I'll just unpack my clothes and maybe take a shower."

He nodded, and I followed him up the narrow stairway to the second floor.

"Your room's the same—haven't moved anything."

I smiled as we reached the room, and nostalgia washed over me. The room was exactly the same as I'd left it two summers ago when I'd last visited. I was vaguely surprised at the happiness I felt, as it was quite the opposite from what I had expected to be feeling tonight, of all nights.

Charlie excused himself to watch a basketball game downstairs, and I unpacked my clothes and showered in the tiny bathroom I now shared with him. I sighed as I slipped into my flannel pajama pants and tank top. Though I felt some level of unexplained happiness at being back with my dad, I dreaded the next day. School. The new girl. Attention. I groaned.

Sleep evaded me as I tossed and turned for what felt like hours before I finally fell into a restless, disturbed sleep. My dreams had always been vivid, but the dreams of that night were almost real—my brain couldn't tell the difference, and my mind struggled with the dream's strange images.

"_Marie, I love you."_

_I was confused at the gorgeous man-child who was looking at me with love and calling me Marie. Who was Marie?_

"_I love you, too." My voice spoke to him of its own accord as it accepted his name for me, his love and that amazing look of adoration in his eyes, as something that was normal. The boy grabbed my hand, kissing the back of it._

A bright, white light flashed before me, and the scenes around me changed, yet the same boy was standing over me again.

_My thoughts were fuzzy, and I couldn't remember the beautiful boy's name as I looked up into his worried eyes. I knew his face and the touch of his hand against mine as my body lay, unbearably aching and so cold._

"_Marie, sweetheart, you will get better. You must. Stay with me, love. I can't live without you."_

_My dream self couldn't speak, though I did long to smooth away the worry lines gathered in his forehead. He was too wonderful to worry—it made him look old, like his father._

"_She's very nearly gone now, son. You need to rest." A kind voice matching the beautiful god-like man that it came from filled my vision, his hand on my troubled angel's shoulder._

_The angel shrugged the comforting hand away. "No! She can't be. No!" he sobbed._

_I wanted to tell him not to cry. Something as beautiful as he should never cry. His face pressed against my hand, his tears sliding across it, cooling my fevered skin as blackness swallowed me whole._

I sat up with a gasp, my heart racing furiously, pounding in my ears as tears streamed down my face. The images had been so very real—almost painfully sorrowful. And for some reason, my heart ached, and I longed for something that I couldn't explain or understand.

I let out a gust of air, running my fingers through my hair as I tried calming myself from the disturbing scene that my mind had just enacted while I slept. I knew that I would look like hell the next day, but try as I might, I was unable to fall back into a very deep slumber. The remainder of the night I was just barely under my conscious awareness.

I awoke before my alarm sounded, tired of trying to find peaceful sleep, and dressed quickly, paying little attention to what I put on. I sighed at my reflection in the mirror. Tired eyes looked back at me, slightly sunken in and ringed with purple bruises from lack of sleep. I attempted to tame my long and tangled mess of a mane before heading down the stairs and glancing out the window. Charlie's police car was missing.

I plopped a bagel into the toaster as I gathered my jacket and backpack, and I was out the door five minutes later.

In the school office, I was given my schedule and a sign-in sheet.

"Hi! You must be Isabella," Immediately upon leaving the office, I was accosted by a slender, pimple-faced boy who screamed 'audio-visual club'.

I nodded in affirmation but corrected him. "Bella."

He smiled. "Eric. So you're new here!"

I fought the urge to roll my eyes at the obvious statement. Instead, I forced a smile. "That's right."

"Can I walk you to your next class?" He didn't wait for an answer. "Who do you have?"

I frowned at my newly acquired schedule. "Algebra with Ms. Davis."

The boy with glasses grinned again. "Perfect. That's my first period, too. Lets go."

"Perfect," I repeated his word, much less enthusiastically.

We walked, and I tried to ignore the curious stares of the small town students. Ms. Davis, a plump and rather grumpy-looking woman, forced me to stand before the class and introduce myself. I mumbled out my name and slinked back to my seat, my face on fire and my heart beating at a rate that was surely too fast to be healthy.

"So, you're Bella."

I turned to my right to see an eager face adorned with straight, dark blond hair.

"Uhm...yes." I responded, hating the attention.

"I'm Jessica. We played together sometimes when you were visiting Chief Swan."

"Oh. Yeah." My memory vaguely recalled a younger, less busty version of the girl before me. I offered a smile, though I wasn't entirely sure if it was convincing or not.

Jessica didn't seem to care about any lack of sincerity on my part. She simply grinned back at me. "So what's your next class, Bella?"

"English Lit."

"Me too," she practically squealed, and glanced behind me. I followed her gaze to a good-looking boy with bright blond hair. His face held very boyish features, dimples, freckles and all. His smile was actually quite endearing.

"Mike Newton." The boy held his hand out to me.

I smiled. "Bella."

"I remember. I was part of the summer mud pie and lemonade club," he winked.

I couldn't help but laugh at the memory of him, Jessica, and me making mud pies while we gave our go at entrepreneurship in the form of a lemonade stand. "That's right. Yeah. Mike," I babbled. The freckled, toothless boy had filled out quite well.

"I'm in English with you ladies; may I walk you both to class?" Mike asked, and I was shocked at the sound of the bell ringing. With our quiet whispers to one another, I'd missed the entirety of the class.

The day was adopting a very surreal feeling; I'd never felt so social or had relaxed so quickly around people I didn't know. It was all very strange. What was it about this place? The timing? I couldn't place the odd sensations brewing within me.

The rest of the morning went by quickly, and soon I was in the cafeteria sandwiched between Jessica and Mike. Jessica was divulging her great wealth of knowledge on our various fellow students.

As she chatted merrily about this person and that, my eyes fell on a table at the far end of the cafeteria. My heart literally jolted in my body and then pounded furiously hard against my chest. At the table sat five extraordinarily beautiful people—all of them staring off at a wall or out the window, and all of them gorgeous and flawless.

"Who are they?" I asked Jessica with a nod over to their table.

Jessica's eyes followed mine. "Oh. They're the Cullens. They're Dr. and Mrs. Cullen's foster kids."

"Dr. Cullen." I repeated the name, its familiarity ringing just beyond the grasp of my recognition before a beautiful face flashed in my mind. I gasped at the image before I could control the noise.

"What?" Jessica asked, confused at my reaction.

What, indeed. Good question, Jessica. I shook my head. "Nothing. I think I remember him. Must be from one of my many trips to the hospital."

Jessica frowned. "I don't think so, Bella. The Cullens moved here last summer from Alaska."

My heart was pounding again, and the light-headed sensation was beginning to take me over as the god-like face with blond hair and amber eyes flashed in front of me again. The image was a little blurry and the intricate details escaped me, but his golden eyes held so much compassion.

"Really?" I asked, knowing I must have seen him somewhere before.

"Yeah," she said, almost bored. "Anyway, those are his foster kids. The big one is Emmett. The beautiful blond one who looks like a Victoria's Secret model? She's Rosalie. And she and Emmett are together...like together, together." Her voice dripped with scandal and small-town condescension.

"The blond guy, he's Rosalie's twin brother, Jasper Hale. He always looks like he's in pain," she giggled.

I failed to see the amusement in that statement. The poor boy did look rather tortured; he must have had a very difficult life.

"He's with Alice, the little pixie-like girl. She's really weird."

I was growing tired of Jessica's shallow commentary on the beautiful people across the room, judgment leaking into her every word.

"Who's he?" I almost whispered as I nodded to the last boy sitting at the end of the table. He was smaller than the other two boys, but still built and very beautiful and chiseled. I felt a strange, inexplicable draw as my eyes took in his form. His eyes were very nearly black, his face troubled. His bronze—

My brain flashed again, causing my head to throb in pain. That hair. I knew that hair. Before my eyes this time was the same boy. His eyes...they definitely were not black, but he held the same troubled, anguished expression as the boy across the room, though in my mind his expressions were so much more intense. It was with horrific surprise that I realized that it was the same boy as my dream from last night—the one who had declared his love to a girl named Marie.

My stomach turned.

"Bella?"

"Sorry," I managed to say through my nausea. "What?"

"I was just telling you, that's Edward Cullen. He's the youngest of them, and he's gorgeous, obviously. But he doesn't date. Apparently no one here is good enough for him."

Jessica's voice continued on but oozed into a blur of wordless sounds as my mind echoed the word 'Edward' over and over again like a skipping record. I was dizzy but forced myself to look back at him. The small girl, Alice, was speaking to him, her lips moving furiously fast; Edward's frown burrowed deeply in his perfectly chiseled forehead.

I couldn't put any of these off-the-wall pieces together, and I was vaguely aware that I was on the brink of hysteria.

"Bella." Jessica's voice snapped my vision back into focus. "Edward Cullen is staring at you."

It took everything that I had not to look back at him. I grabbed Jessica's arm. "Stop looking over there, Jessica."

She looked at me, face adorned in complete surprise.

"Yeah, the Cullens are really not worth all the attention, Jess." This cold statement came from Mike, and I looked over at him, suddenly finding him less attractive, less friendly even. "They're freaks," he added.

"Excuse me," I choked out as I stood with my bottle of juice and rushed out of the room as quickly as my clumsy self would allow, seeking some sort of refuge from the deluge of strange occurrences.

My next class was biology. I worked my way to the science building, remembering its location from passing by it earlier that morning.

"Bella!" I sighed, fighting back a groan of annoyance and frustration. Mike.

"Where are you headed?"

"Biology," I mumbled.

"Me too," he smiled. "It's this way."

My desperate annoyance was covered with a small, forced smile, and we walked in silence toward the correct building. Once we'd reached the appropriate classroom, I took my check-in sheet to Mr. Molina.

"Ah, Miss Swan," he said flatly. "Welcome. The last free seat is there in back." He pointed toward the back of the room, and my breath caught in my throat; I would be sitting next to the sexy, god-like mystery man of my dreams. Literally.

I sighed and sat next to him, feeling his eyes burning me with their intensity. Feeling some highly uncharacteristic bravery, I turned in my seat toward him and offered a smile. He was utterly gorgeous.

However beautiful he was, his face was tortured again, and he didn't return my smile. Conversely, he slid his stool to the far end of the table. Having always been ultra-sensitive, the action not only frazzled my already overwhelmed being, but immediately hit me with painful rejection. And I hadn't even spoken.

The class drudged on as if it would never end; Edward gripped the edges of the lab table as if he were angry. Perhaps he _was_ angry? Unbalanced, maybe? I frowned when the bell rang and he darted quickly through the exit before anyone else had even looked up from their textbooks.

"What'd you do to Cullen? He looked so pissed." Mike stood beside me while I shoved my biology book in my bag.

I shrugged with a frown. "I really don't know."

Mike smiled. "Don't worry about it. He probably forgot his Prozac this morning."

It was supposed to be a joke, I knew that, but I couldn't find it within myself to even fake a laugh.

Through my next class, gym, I was allowed to sit out, as I'd neglected to bring clothes. As I sat in the hard and uncomfortable metal bleachers, I struggled to understand just what exactly was going on in my mind. I was beginning to feel a little crazy.

Perhaps it was just all of the change in such a short amount of time. Yet how had I dreamt of Edward before even knowing who he was or even _that_ he was? Who was the other man in my dream? Was it Dr. Cullen, as my flashback suggested? I was frustrated and confused, and honestly a little frightened.

Finally, the final bell signaled the end of gym, and I went to the office to turn in my paper. On the way out to my car, my gaze met with Alice's. She was standing off to the side of the last building before the parking lot. She smiled and took a step closer to me.

"Bella," she said.

I took a curious step closer to her; she smiled again.

"I'm Alice. Alice Cullen."

I nodded. "Hi."

"Bella, I can't talk right now, but I just wanted to introduce myself. We're going to be great friends."

She skipped away before my brain could comprehend any kind of verbal response to her words and declaration. And then I caught Edward's eyes with my own; our gazes locked, and how long they stayed connected, I didn't know. It could have been seconds or minutes, maybe even hours, though that seemed very unlikely, as students still littered the lot around us.

Again, my brain—in and of itself—left the present completely and flashed to the same boy with red-brown and messy locks. In this image he wasn't sad or worried or upset. His face radiated joy, and if I had thought he was beautiful before, the happiness magnified the beauty exponentially. And his eyes. They were green. They were jungles. And they were beautiful. He was laughing, and then he reached for me, his lips soft and warm and sweet against mine.

"_My sweet Marie," his honey voice whispered in my ear. "Oh, how I love you. I can't wait to marry you."_

The slamming of a car door broke apart my daydream, and the vision dissolved. I watched as the bronze enigma and his siblings drove through the parking lot in a silver Volvo. As her window passed me, I again caught Alice's eye, and she smiled, almost as if she knew not only my mystery, but its answers as well.

I sighed as I jerked open the door of my car, so very ready to leave this day behind. There was something about Edward Cullen. I didn't know him, and after today and his rude behavior in biology, I wasn't even really sure that I liked him. Yet I could think of little else all day. It was as if, in one bat of his gorgeously long lashes, he had claimed his spot as the very center of my universe. And for some reason that I still couldn't explain, the boy hated me.

All of this was quite enough for the high school drama quota, but add onto that my very bizarre dreams and daydreams, and I was puzzled and wholly overwhelmed. Something strange had penetrated my world, stirring and calculating, tearing me in two, as if I belonged somewhere that I wasn't—and it all seemed centered on the strange boy with black eyes and copper hair. Who exactly _was_ Edward Cullen? And just how was it that, for good or for bad, he was turning my world completely upside down?

***

**A/N: This is a story that's been brewing in my brain for awhile now, and I decided to go ahead and give it a go! Hope you enjoy it. :) Send me a review and let me know ;-)**

**Great big thanks to JadeMoon, my super awesome beta girl. :-)**

**Check out my other story in the works: Rescue Me. Also check out my profile for story recommends and my twitter link (new to twitter, still trying to build an ff network on there ;-) )**


	2. Chapter 2 Beyond Comprehension

**Chapter 2- Beyond Comprehension**

**Edward's POV**

Endless. It had been one long and endless, empty and lonely day of over one hundred years. Not that the time had been entirely miserable and lacking; I had my family, and they had eased a limited portion of the odd and inexplicable longing that I had felt since the moment that I opened my vampire eyes—a longing, deep and needful and something not at all related to bloodlust, but it was just as strong.

It had been worse in the beginning, the unbelievable yearning for something just beyond my explanation, just out of my comprehension. It had eased slightly throughout the years but was still an ever-present, still nearly unbearable sensation coursing through my head and, if it existed, my soul.

So with the frustration of failing miserably at grasping my unknown desire, I had focused my attentions on anything else; I had used my enormous amounts of free time to improve my skills and my mind, extending my knowledge to new limits. I had learned every major written and spoken language, some in many different dialects; I had earned two medical degrees and studied music theory and practice. I had focused a great deal of time and energy into mastering the art of piano, guitar, and violin and had thrown myself into all of these things with an ardent vigor as a means of distraction from a missing piece in my existence—something my subconscious being was all too aware of, something I'd left behind somewhere along the way, and something I was desperate to have back.

I failed to put any of this into words as my pen rested just half an inch above the cream page of my journal. Words escaped me, and I was overwhelmed with emptiness almost as keenly as I had been those first days, weeks, months, even years after Carlisle had changed me. As I struggled to express myself in words that wouldn't come, I heard my family rousing from their evening activities to prepare for yet another day of playing human.

Alice was barking orders at everyone else as to what they should wear for the day, while I sat at my desk in my room on the third floor of our Washington home, feeling empty and desolate. I was stuck in a bizarre suspension between reality and the longing that I didn't understand—unable to release even just an ounce of the torment that plagued my very being.

The thoughts of my family filtered up to me from around the house, but I tried to ignore them, tried to give them their privacy. My mind reading abilities often worked in favor for us all, as it was imperative for us to maintain our secret identities, and it was always easier to know what people thought of the peculiar Cullens. If there was ever even a close guess as to who or, rather, _what_ we really were, we packed up and moved on.

_Edward, I need to talk to you._ Alice's thoughts drifted toward me, and I could hear her light, quick footsteps on the stairs. She opened my door without knocking, and danced up to me, her smile as bright as it always was. I often envied her happiness, her contentment.

_Don't say anything, Edward, I just wanted to show this to you._ And in her mind flashed a vision. If my mind reading abilities were helpful for us, Alice's visions of the future were invaluable. She rarely missed anything that affected us with any kind of impact.

In her mind was a girl, a very familiar girl—just beyond my ability to recognize. She was an average teenage girl with long, chestnut hair and deep brown eyes. My heart lurched with another twinge of recognition, bringing with it more confusion than I'd ever felt in my vampire existence.

In Alice's vision, I was talking to the girl, laughing even; I never laughed. Her smile was really rather beautiful, and I felt drawn to her—even the vision of her. Then it all went black, and I looked at Alice in confusion.

"She's important, Edward. I don't know why, I can't see why, but she's important. She changes our future. Don't kill her today."

I was offended by that. I had more control over my bloodlust than anyone else in our household, with the exception of Carlisle. The man was a saint, if that was at all possible for someone of our kind. He had never consumed even an ounce of human blood in his almost four hundred years as a vampire.

Alice frowned, probably at my indignant expression. "Edward, look," she sighed.

And a vision of myself, eyes raging in a crazed frenzy, fell before my mind's eye. I lunged at the girl of the previous vision, and then she was limp. Lifeless.

I stared at Alice, shock briefly taking over everything else within me. "Alice?"

She shook her head with a frown. "Her blood will tempt you unlike anything ever has, Edward, but you must stay in control. This family needs her. _You_ need her."

I returned her frown, trying to absorb her words. "Need her? Why?"

She smiled. "I really don't know, Edward, but there is a strange weight in these visions. It almost feels like gravity; it's big."

I shook my head. "I don't understand."

"I know." Alice's hand fell to my arm. "I don't fully understand either, but it will all play out—just...just don't mess this up, Edward. It's too important."

I pushed aside my offense at the statement this time and simply nodded at her; I was even more overwhelmed with the new weight of responsibility that I was unable to comprehend. It was an unsettling feeling; I despised feeling so out of control.

"We'll see her today," she warned as her small frame danced to my closet, pulling out clothing and throwing it on my black leather couch. "Wear this," was all she said, and then she was gone.

I somewhat numbly stepped into the light-wash jeans and forest green sweater, and minutes later we were in my Volvo and on our way to school. As we neared, I felt it—exactly what Alice had spoken of—the incredible weight of the air. It was almost physical, and it was certainly a forceful essence.

I was immediately on guard as Alice, Jasper and I got out of the car. Our 'siblings', Emmett and Rosalie, were driving separately in Emmett's Jeep. A wave of peaceful calm washed over me, and I glanced at Alice's husband, Jasper, who returned an empathetic almost-smile.

"Are you okay?" he asked me with a small frown.

Jasper's six-foot-four, lean and muscular frame was slightly odd next to Alice's tiny, barely five-foot height, as his arm engulfed her. Another of our family to have a supernatural 'gift', Jasper's empath abilities allowed him to not only gauge the moods of the atmosphere and the people in it, but to change them as well.

I nodded in response to his inquiry. "What about you? Are _you_ okay?"

Jasper also struggled with bloodlust more acutely than the rest of us; I felt it foolish that Alice pushed him to attend school with us, as he was surrounded daily by so many human bodies. Yet she insisted that he would be fine, and we all put our trust in her.

He nodded and swallowed. "I'm fine. But...there's such a strange feeling in the air. Something I can't really explain, but it's big. It even dwarfs all of the lust."

I almost chuckled at that. Second only to the force of his bloodlust was the powerful force of good, old-fashioned, hormone-driven and desirous lust from the young humans surrounding us—something that affected me through their minds, as well.

"Is that a good thing?" I asked.

Jasper's face twisted into a goofy smile. "It remains to be seen."

Alice rolled her eyes. "Of course it's a good thing. I told you both, this girl is going to change us. All of us. And I have a feeling that this weird gravity is related somehow to her."

I shook my head, mostly to clear the fog of confusion. "See you guys at 'lunch'," I said, walking away before they responded.

My mind immediately focused on those around me. Normally, I tried to block them all out; the human mind was so horribly small, so self-centered and shallow, but today I was uncharacteristically curious.

_Wow, she's even prettier than I remember._ The mental voice was that of Eric Yorkie, a typical teenage boy who's mind was immediately focused on thoughts of kissing the girl in his mind's eye. Eric's mind never got much further than kissing in his mental musings and fantasies—much unlike many of the other adolescent boys in the school. It was my guess that his mind wasn't sure what to do with any fantasy past that point, and really, it was almost amusing. It wasn't for his lack of desire, of that I was certain.

The girl in his mind was leaving the school's office with her sign-in sheet in hand and her black backpack on her shoulder. She was the same girl in Alice's vision; she was nervous, that much was obvious. Eric wasted no time in approaching the poor girl, and immediately I was intrigued by her— much more so than I'd ever been intrigued with anyone else before, let alone a human. Her smile, even in Eric's mind, was stunning, and it caused an almost frightening reaction in my mind.

In my century of vampiric years, I had never experienced anything similar to what happened in that moment. My mind was fully focused on only one thing, and everything else, even my actual vision, blackened, as a very foggy and unclear picture played in my mind. It reminded me of watching a film—one similar to the films made in the late twenties—fuzzy, a little blurry, lacking clarity. The only difference was that in my mind, there was color in the scene.

_She smiled at me; it was the same smile, bright and beautiful. Together we walked in a field that, to whoever I was in this dream-like moment, seemed very familiar and comforting. My alternate self held her hand._

"_Edward," she smiled. Her smile made my heart skip a beat._

Heart skip a beat. That concept alone was enough to snap me out of whatever it was that had just happened to me. Heart skip a beat? That was rather impossible for one who's heart had stopped beating decades ago. I shook my head, feeling something I had never felt before: nausea.

Before that moment, I had never before been fully unaware of my surroundings. It was as if all of my heightened senses and instincts had shut down while playing through the moment of the girl and me in my mind. It was completely unnerving and irritating to me. I quickly glanced around the open area, realizing that everyone else had cleared out, meaning I was late for first period.

I sighed. I loathed being late, and so instead of heading to my trigonometry class which I could not only understand better, but probably teach better, than the instructor herself, I headed back to my car. Once in the driver's seat, I stuffed the ear buds connected to my iPod in place and hit play. The calming sounds of Debussy filled my ears and immediately settled me a bit, as the musical melodies drowned out the constant humming of mental voices.

I pulled out my journal but was still unable to write. With a resigned sigh, I turned the volume of the music down and searched for Eric's mind again; I was curious about the girl. I wasn't disappointed— of course he was looking at her. She was now talking to Jessica Stanley and Mike Newton, quite possibly two of the shallowest minds I had ever encountered. I jumped from Eric's mind to Mike's, trying to avoid Jessica's mind altogether; Mike's was definitely the lesser of the two evils.

Two evils. The irony of that thought and the amusement it stirred in me distracted me momentarily, until his vile thoughts pulled me back in.

_She's so hot— she's really filled out since the last time I saw her._

His mind immediately flashed back to a small girl of maybe eight or nine; her brown eyes sparkled with laughter and mischief, and her long brown hair was in double braids. I smiled involuntarily at the image; she was quite adorable, even then.

Mike's memory of the little girl spurred a flash in my own mind; it filled with an image of the same girl, almost identical to the one of Mike's memory, but her hair was not in braids; it was tied with blue ribbons in two low pigtails, but her eyes were just as bright, her smile just as contagious.

_She giggled; the sound filled me with an amused joy._

"_Edward, I'll wager that I am just as good of a climber as you, if not better," she said with a stubborn set of her jaw. The stern look on her face was betrayed by another beautiful, childish giggle._

"_Oh now, Marie, you know that I'm the best climber in our class. Even better than George Winston! Plus you're wearing a dress. Everyone knows girls can't climb as good as boys," I coaxed her. I knew better. She could climb just as well as, if not better, than I. _

_Her eyes flashed in contempt, and she growled as she crossed her arms over her chest. "Fine." With that, her dress was over her head and she was left in her petticoat and bloomers. _

_I shouldn't have been shocked, but I was. All I could do was stare in wonder as she threw the dress down on the ground and trekked up the tree, branch by precarious branch._

My brain snapped back into focus, and I was left in a perplexed awe. Obviously she had been talking to me...but my responses to her hadn't sounded like me. My voice had been high and child-like. If it hadn't been so unsettling, I would have been amused by the vision that had played in my mind.

I shook my head free of the scene, gasping for air that my body didn't need, trying desperately to calm my anxious nerves. My mind felt tired, and I was utterly overwhelmed by the transpiring peculiarities of the day.

I forced myself to stop following her in people's minds after that. Was it possible that she had been in one of the towns that we'd lived in in the past? When she was that age? And perhaps my subconscious, still longing to be human, placed itself in that memory of her as a child? What other possible explanation was there for the bizarre occurrence?

I sighed and trudged absentmindedly through the rest of my morning classes, completely distracted and flustered. Was my mind so desperately trying to grasp onto whatever it was that I was looking for that I had started hallucinating? Was it even possible for a being such as I to hallucinate?

"Edward!" My eyes darted to find Alice in the crowded hallway. I sighed in relief.

"Hi," I greeted.

"Hi," Alice smiled. "Hang in there, Edward."

I glanced at her as we walked toward the cafeteria and the vulgar smell of human food. "Alice..."

She simply shook her head. "I still don't know, Edward. She'll be in biology with you after lunch—be prepared."

I shook my head. "Alice...I have been having these weird—"

"I know," she interrupted. "I don't know what it is, but please, be careful. We need her."

She repeated the cryptic phrase that she had used this morning, and my apprehension grew as the pressure nearly crushed my dead chest. The two of us joined our family at our usual table, and I waited for her.

She came in with both Jessica and Mike, looking slightly overwhelmed. I let my eyes travel over her and took in her being for the first time with my own eyes as she stood in the lunch line.

She was actually very beautiful; her eyes sparkled when she smiled, and I could physically feel an astonishing and invisible force calling me to her. I fought it laboriously with every ounce of willpower that I possessed.

I allowed myself to dive into Jessica's petty mind as she and the girl walked to a table across the room from me, hoping that it wouldn't cause any strange hallucinations. Jessica was sharing her extensive knowledge on many members of the student body, and the girl...her name was Bella. _Italian for beautiful_, my distracted thoughts interrupted. _Bella's_ eyes soaked in the scene around her, and I decided to try and find her mental voice. It should have been easier to find the unfamiliar voice when she was this close, now sitting within mere feet of me.

I used every ounce of my focus to find her but was unable to zero in on it. Surely she had thoughts? No one's mind was completely devoid of thought—not even the simplest of minds. And her facial expressions betrayed her; she was reacting to Jessica's babble. Then her eyes drifted towards our table, and I quickly diverted my own from her and over to the large window, looking out at the encroaching forest greens.

"Who are they?" a beautiful voice asked. It was her. It was Bella's voice. Why wasn't I able to hear her thoughts?

Jessica's thoughts sighed. _Edward. Of course she zooms in on them. _"Oh," she said aloud. "They're the Cullens. They're Doctor and Mrs. Cullen's foster kids."

I watched Bella's face through Jessica's eyes. Her brow furrowed. "Dr. Cullen," she said, as if searching for something. Her eyes glassed over slightly for only a moment, looking much like Alice when she saw visions of the future, before she gasped.

I frowned, her reaction utterly baffling to me.

"What?" Jessica asked. Her mental tone was somewhat more annoyed. _What is her deal, anyway? I really don't see why all the guys are fawning over her. She's not even very pretty._

I couldn't rationalize my immediate anger at Jessica's thoughts. Bella was quite stunning, but I had to remind myself of Jessica's pettiness.

"Nothing," Bella said, interrupting my angry thoughts toward Jessica. She shook her head as her eyes refocused. "I think I remember him. Must be from one of my many trips to the hospital."

That was interesting; she knew Carlisle? Perhaps my musings of living in the same town as Bella years ago were accurate? I was certain she hadn't seen him here in Forks.

Jessica's mind was blank for a moment. "I don't think so, Bella. The Cullens moved here last summer from Alaska."

A look of panic spread across Bella's delicate face, her breathing accelerated slightly, and I could actually hear the increased beat of one person's heart—_Bella's _heart.

"Really?" Her voice was strained.

_Oh my god, she is such a freak. I wonder how long it will take for Mike to lose interest in her? _"Yeah," Jessica answered aloud. "Anyway, those are his foster kids." Both Jessica's eyes and Bella's were on our table now. "The big one is Emmett. The beautiful blond who looks like a Victoria's Secret model? That's Rosalie. And she and Emmett are together...like together, together." I almost laughed at the disgust that laced not only her spoken words, but her thoughts as well. _So sick. Freaks. Edward is the only normal one of the bunch..._Another internal sigh punctuated her thoughts.

I fought the urge to roll my eyes. If only she knew.

"The blond guy, he's Rosalie's twin brother, Jasper Hale. He always looks like he's in pain," she giggled.

I could only see part of Bella's face from Jessica's viewpoint, but it was obvious that she was frowning as she studied us. I would have given anything in that moment to know what she was thinking.

"He's with Alice, the little pixie-like girl. She's really weird."

Bella sighed; Jessica didn't hear it, but so focused on Bella was I that my ears had picked up the slight sound.

Bella's eyes were still on our table. "Who's he?" she asked quietly, nodding her head toward me. I fought to keep my face stoic; I'd never felt such a huge urge to smile before—certainly not at attention from a human.

Jessica's mental vision filled with a view of myself as she turned her her eyes onto me. _The most beautiful boy in the world. And don't even think about it; he wouldn't want someone as plain as you, anyway._

I cringed at her inner dialogue and the harsh thoughts that she carried regarding Bella. I felt a strange compulsion to walk over to their table and show Jessica just how wrong she was. She was blabbering about me, but Bella's face was almost vacant again, her eyes far away and her forehead creased in thought. I worried for a moment that she might lose consciousness.

Jessica stopped mid-sentence when it occurred to her that Bella wasn't listening.

"Bella?" _God, she's already ogling him._

Never mind the fact that Bella wasn't even looking at me. I rolled my eyes at Jessica's lack of logic, but even more so at the jealousy plaguing her mind.

"Sorry," Bella blinked. She looked rather ill; the term 'green about the gills' came to my mind, and I involuntarily smiled at the phrase, though I was almost overwhelmed in my concern for the girl.

"What?" Bella asked, concentrating her gaze on Jessica.

"I was just telling you, that's Edward Cullen. He's the youngest of them, and he's gorgeous, obviously. But he doesn't date. Apparently no one here is good enough for him." _So don't waste your time, Swan,_ she added mentally.

Bella's features were almost tortured, and my dead heart ached at the sight. With that reaction came an entirely new round of confusion for me to ponder.

I couldn't help myself; I allowed my gaze to fall upon the beauty across the room. She looked worried and deep in thought, and I once again felt the enormous drive to go to her. I again used every bit of the strength that I had to keep myself firmly seated where I was.

"Bella, Edward Cullen is staring at you," Jessica's voice said, somewhat begrudgingly.

I groaned internally, but to my surprise, Bella didn't look at me. Jessica's mind was in a state of complete surprise when Bella grabbed onto her arm, her voice strong, almost harsh.

"Stop looking over there, Jessica."

"Yeah," a male voice contributed, and Jessica's eyes dashed to Mike as he spoke. "The Cullens aren't worth all the attention, Jess. They're freaks."

Jessica's mind was a wordless mush of confusion.

I watched as Bella stood, and I heard her quietly excuse herself from the table. I inhaled deeply as she left the cafeteria with Mike on her heels. My eyes met Alice's, and she smiled.

"Go to biology," she said firmly. "It'll be difficult for you, Edward, but you have to be strong. This has got to happen," she stated emphatically.

I nodded, feeling suddenly unsure of myself. I was numb again and ignored everyone and everything as I made my way to the classroom. I sat and almost smiled at the empty seat next to mine; the poor girl would have to sit next to me, and according to Alice, I'd soon be tempted by Bella's blood. The thought was sobering, and I steeled myself.

Bella walked in with Newton, and he took his seat as she spoke to Mr. Molina and he pointed to the empty spot next to me at the lab table. I watched her walk toward me, unable to avert my eyes from her form. She took a seat and was obviously trying to avoid eye contact with me. If I could've had my breath taken away, she certainly would have been the one to do it. As it was, I had decided to hold my breath when she entered the room so as not to inhale the scent that would supposedly ignite the monster within.

My plans failed me miserably, and it all happened so suddenly. Bella had turned to look at me and offered the most beautiful smile I had ever seen. And I wanted to smile back at her, but before I could react, my mind flashed a bright light.

_The same girl stood before me with the same smile on her face. Her eyes sparkled as I leaned in to kiss her, and I inhaled deeply, surprised at how alluring her lips were and how close my own were to them._

With the inhale of air and the sweetest scent I'd ever smelled, the vision was gone as quickly as it had come and was replaced by a hungry inner monster who basked in the delicious scent of Bella's blood. I had never smelled anything as enticing as she, and I wanted her; I needed to taste her.

_Edward, no._ I heard Alice's mental voice yelling at me, and it broke through the monster-induced frenzy in my mind. Reality crashed down upon me, and I was utterly mortified at myself and how close I had just come to taking the girl's life right there, consequences be damned.

I pushed my stool to the far opposite end from Bella and stopped breathing again. The logical part of me, the part that retained some semblance of humanity, struggled to keep the monster inside. I grabbed the table's edge as venom coated my mouth. I wanted to break the table. I wanted to let out the fearsome growl that I was bottling inside. I wanted to run. I wanted to be as far away from this innocent girl as I could be, and I wanted to be as close to her as possible—all in the same moment of time.

My mind raged on in silence. I could see her hurt expression from the corner of my eye and instantly felt remorse for having been the one to put it there—not enough remorse, however, to distract me from the monster.

I heard nothing—no minds, no spoken words, no sound as I used every ounce of strength that I had to concentrate on keeping my vicious monster on a leash. A small part of my mind counted down each long second until the bell would signal the end of class. I bolted two seconds before the sound shrilled through the air and dashed as fast as I dared to the parking lot and into my car.

I breathed deeply, trying to rid my nose and empty lungs and head of Bella's wonderfully appetizing flavor. I was unable to process what had happened. Not even in my newborn years had I felt a call of blood that strongly. The bloodlust was coupled with Alice's declarations of how important Bella would become to our family. And the combination of those was added to the strange flashes in my brain that I couldn't understand. It was too much for me. My mind had never been so stretched, so unable to comprehend, so lost, and yet somehow also feeling found. I couldn't make any sense out of it.

My head against the headrest of the driver's seat, I closed my eyes and breathed in and out deeply, hoping to calm myself as I replayed everything from the day in my mind. I couldn't understand why Bella was familiar to me, or why Carlisle was familiar to her. I had a feeling that Alice was right in that everything connected somehow; I just couldn't comprehend how or why.

When I opened my eyes, I realized that the final period of the day must have ended, as students were pouring into the parking lot in droves. My eyes locked onto Alice, who was standing five feet from the sidewalk where Bella stood. They were facing one another, and Alice was talking to Bella. I hadn't caught the exchange in time to realize what was said before Alice made her way to my car. My eyes locked onto Bella's, and my stomach lurched.

My head ached with pain as my mind flashed in white again.

_White. She was in white, and she looked so sick, so very frail. I couldn't understand why she wasn't getting better. Her face was taut, her eyes glazed over but looking at me in love, though I didn't think she fully recognized who I was._

"_Marie, love," I whispered to her, hot tears falling down my cheeks._

_Her weak hand moved to wipe away the tears. "Don't cry," she whispered. "I love you. Don't cry."_

_And then sleep took her again, her chest rising and falling with each fatigued and labored breath. I cried for her. I cried for my father. I cried for her father, for her little brother. The tears streaked from my eyes to her hands and white sheets, and then there was a very cold hand on my shoulder._

I gasped. The cold hand. That had been real. I looked over to find Alice's eyes studying me intently, her hand on my shoulder, but it wasn't cold, not to me.

My emotions were everywhere, and if I had had the ability, I would have cried then. What was happening to me?

"Alice...what's going on?"

She and Jasper had hunted the night before, and her eyes were golden honey but so very grave. It was almost disturbing to see her eyes so serious on her usually happy, carefree face. She shook her head. "Edward, I don't know what's going on. I've gotten flashes throughout the day, but nothing makes sense. You're going to have to acclimate yourself to her scent slowly, but try not to scare her away. It's going to take some time to ease her into our world, Edward."

"What? No. No! She doesn't belong in our world, Alice. I won't have it." I was furious at her for suggesting it. Bella was innocent. Pure. She needed to remain that way; being introduced to the mythical word of vampires wouldn't keep her unblemished— not to mention the immense danger that she would be in by spending any sort of time with any of us alone.

"She does, Edward," Alice said firmly. "She does belong in our world; that's why she's here."

"What?" Another cryptic statement I didn't understand.

Alice shook her head. "I don't know why, but I do know it's true."

I sighed. "Damn it, Alice. I don't know what's going on!"

She smiled. "It will be okay, Edward. Trust me about that, alright? You're going to have to have some patience. This is unlike anything that we've ever dealt with before. Do as I tell you. Work on getting used to her scent, being around her. Control yourself, and don't kill her, and we'll go from there. It will all work out in the end."

"What is the end?" I asked, my choked voice stuck in my throat.

Her gaze held mine for a long moment, and I was vaguely aware of Jasper climbing into the backseat and sucking in his breath.

"God, Edward. Are you okay?" he asked, immediately covering me in another wave of calm.

I inhaled deeply. "Thanks."

He nodded, his face furrowed in concern.

"There isn't an end, Edward. And I can't see much yet. I've seen snippets of the two of you talking, holding hands even, and I've seen snippets of her at our house, talking with each of us, playing games, smiling and laughing. You're smiling and laughing in those as well. But then I also see snippets of her lifeless and gone, and our family falling apart—and that's how I know we need her. If something happens to her, something happens to us."

I exhaled a large amount of air, the overwhelmed feelings that swirled in and around me were somewhat smothered by the Jasper-induced calm.

"Who is she, Alice?"

She smiled softly. "Edward...I think she's your soul mate."

***

**A/N: Got this chapter through the editing process more quickly than anticipated, so I'm updating early :) Please shoot me a review (Seriously love them and trade beloved chocolate for them... ;-) )**

**Thank you to my awesome beta, JadeMoon, who is SO incredibly patient with my mistakes! **

***85 Days until New Moon.... :-)**

**AND, if you haven't already, check out the other story I am writing: Rescue Me. Hoping to have its next chapter up on Saturday. :-)**


	3. Chapter 3 Love Once Lost

**Chapter 3-Love Once Lost**

**Edward's POV**

I stormed through the front door of our secluded house, overwhelmed to the point of almost feeling angry. Esme, my 'mother' for all intents and purposes, met us with a smile that vanished quickly when her eyes fell upon my face.

"Where's Carlisle?" I demanded of her. I knew that my tone was rude, harsh even, and I hadn't even greeted her with a proper 'hello', but I found it difficult to care in that particular moment, in the midst of all of the turmoil swirling within my brain.

Alice, who was standing behind me with Jasper, let out an exasperated sigh. _He's got to relax or he's going to completely blow it._ Her thoughts nearly overlapped Esme's.

_Poor boy. He's so tortured. But there's something new in his eyes today...._

I shook my head, trying to rid my mind of their thoughts—I had enough to deal with inside of my own mind. "Esme, I apologize for that; I just...I need to speak with Carlisle."

She smiled a soft and understanding smile, rubbing her hand in slow, smooth circles over my back, trying to calm me.

"It's all right, Edward. Carlisle's at the hospital right now, but he should be home at anytime."

I forced a smile that I didn't feel and certainly doubted was convincing. I nodded at her. "Thanks," I whispered before darting toward the stairs, taking them two at a time to the third floor of the house and the sanctuary of my bedroom.

I paced back and forth nervously. Today had been entirely too much for me to handle. Something about Bella and the odd tornado of forces swirling around me was frightening. I had never in my existence—at least not the one that I could remember—been frightened of anything until this day. Jasper and Alice had been correct; whatever this monumental force was, it was powerful.

_Son, may I come in?_ Carlisle's mental voice was close, and I internally groaned at the fact that I hadn't even heard him approach. Was it possible for someone of our kind to go mad? Perhaps that was what was happening to me...

"Come in," I called aloud to him.

He entered, closing the door behind him; his golden eyes held a fatherly concern that briefly warmed my heart. _Esme was right; he looks worse than usual._ He frowned.

I sighed, and he smiled apologetically. "I'm sorry, Edward."

I shook my head, brushing off his internal thoughts. "Carlisle, is it possible for our kind to...to go mad?"

His eyes widened in surprise. "Yes..." he admitted hesitantly.

I frowned at him, running a hand through my hair before meeting his gaze again. "I think I'm going crazy," I whispered.

_What in Heaven's name happened?_ he thought more to himself than to me, and his frown deepened. "What's wrong, Edward?"

I was still pacing; I couldn't hold still...also very uncharacteristic of me, of what I was— another of many reminders that my world had just been thrown into a blender. "There's this girl, Carlisle. I've—I've been having strange hallucinations about her, and Alice has had visions of her. She just moved here; she's Chief Swan's daughter. Carlisle, every time I look at her, I get these weird visions...almost like memories, but they're so fuzzy."

_What kind of memories?_ he thought, and before he could voice the question, I answered it.

"I don't know. It's like they're of her, but they don't make any sense. I think maybe it's my subconscious making strange scenarios with my secret longings and desires." I voiced that as a question, searching his eyes for answers that I wished would be there. "I don't know, Carlisle. Is it possible that we lived in the same town as her before? In the past...when she was younger?"

"It's not likely, son, but I suppose that anything is possible. Your memories...are they human memories, Edward?"

I instantly wanted to deny that they were, but stopped myself, reviewing each episode that I had experienced that day.

"Oh my god, Carlisle. Yes. I was crying in one of them."

His brow furrowed again. _Perhaps the Swan girl reminds him of— _he immediately cut the thought short, eyes darting to mine, and I eyed him warily.

"Reminds me of who, Carlisle?"

His eyes held mine steadily, but he continued to block his thoughts from me.

"Of Marie?" I choked out, the name feeling odd on my lips as my voice failed me. My tone was almost accusing, though I wasn't sure why.

His eyes widened. "Edward—"

"Never mind," I snapped. His face told me all I needed to know, that he had been hiding this from me since the beginning—whatever it was.

_Edward,_ he said again, this time only in his mind.

I didn't want to hear anything else from him at that moment. "Carlisle, I've got to get out of here for a few days. Something has happened, and I don't know what, but I can't handle it. The change—it's too much. I need some time."

He nodded, continuing to barricade his thoughts from me, which only fueled my anger.

I pushed passed him, and with nothing but the clothes on my back and the wallet in my jeans, I darted out the door and to my car, yanking the door open a little too roughly. Before I could escape, I was stopped by thoughts directed at me.

_Edward._ Alice's mind was calm and quiet as she stood in the doorway of the house. _Carlisle did it to protect you; don't be angry._ And then she smiled knowingly. _You'll feel better when you get back._

I shook my head without comment, still angry at the entire situation, and got in my car, peeling out of the long driveway and speeding down the lane without another glance back. I pushed my car to its limits, driving north at one hundred and twenty miles an hour.

I drove, trying to clear everything—all of it—out of my mind. I didn't want to think. I didn't want to form philosophies on whatever the hell was going on and why my world had been turned upside down in a matter of hours. I didn't want to wonder what secret Carlisle had kept from me regarding Marie. I didn't even want to wonder about who Marie was or if I had truly ever really loved that deeply before. I didn't want to think about Bella and why she initiated the memories in my mind. I didn't want to think about what cosmic force pulled me toward her or why it was even bothering to do so in the first place.

But I couldn't stop them; the thoughts wouldn't leave my mind. They attacked me from all sides, bringing along with them emotions that I hadn't felt in so very long. The anger had subsided and been replaced most prominently with fear. I feared the past. I feared the future. Hell, if I was being honest, I feared the moment. With my fear was mixed a strange pain—a pain caused by loss. That particular emotion made no sense whatsoever. I was, of course, confused, and that same longing that had existed within me from the very beginning still nagged at me—even more powerfully today than it had in the beginning.

It had been many hours before I stopped driving, and when I did I had reached the end of a deserted highway, having no idea where I was. The moon was high and bright in the sky, and I had climbed in elevation, surrounded by snow. I exited the car, took in a deep breath of crisp, mountain air, and reached to the backseat, grabbing the journal that I'd thrown back there after school earlier that afternoon, which now seemed like days ago.

I locked the car, though I doubted that there was anyone within one hundred miles of me. I walked, at a slow, human pace, through the forest. My flawless vampire sight absorbed everything, the darkness having no effect on my vision. The pine trees were still covered in snow, just as the earth was far under the many inches of the white powder beneath my feet. I walked, journal in hand, until the sun came up.

I guessed that it was probably about seven in the morning before I finally stopped walking. I'd reached the top of a mountain peak several feet above the tree line, the cold having no effect on my undead body. I sat on a large boulder that stuck up out of the several feet of packed snow in a clearing, and I wrote.

Pages were filled as I leaked my frustrations from pen to paper. I wrote as the sun's rays sparkled off of the skin of my hands; I wrote as the sun set in a sky of crimson and purple. My pen eventually ran out of ink sometime in the night under the illumination of the moon, and though I still felt the burden of change, however good Alice had promised that the change would be, I did feel slightly lighter. I chuckled; the new two hundred, full pages that I'd written carried some weight after all.

I set the brown, leather-bound journal and empty pen beside me and reclined on the large, granite rock. My mind wandered to Bella; my eyes re-traced her face—the face that had been burned into my vampire memory for eternity. She and Marie looked very much the same, though my memories of Marie were fuzzy and completely lacking in clarity.

I hadn't wanted to think about what the memories were. They each, even the childhood memory, shouted of my love for Marie. Had she and I been childhood sweethearts? What had happened to her after I was changed? Why didn't Carlisle change her as well, so that she and I could have been together forever? Had she been the reason that I had been left to long for her, without even knowing that it was actually her...her love that I longed for? And did Carlisle know that? Did he know the root of my longing and hide it from me all of these many, long and lonely years?

I found myself wishing oppositely than I had a few days earlier; I wished, instead, of not triggering the memories— that I could remember _more_ of her, that I could see her in my mind's eye and feel the love and adoration that I had felt during those moments, when my memories had completely overtaken my being.I hadn't recognized the feeling then, but I was sure that I did now. I had loved her.

And what about Bella? Where did she fit into all of this? Was she truly my soul mate, as Alice had suggested? Was I even worthy of having a soul mate? Was Marie somehow leading me to Bella? Why did the two look the same? Was it possible that they had been related somehow? Did they share the same blood? Was that why Bella's blood was sweeter to me than any I'd ever experienced before?

My mind exhausted itself with the many unanswered questions and hypotheses that I had told myself I wouldn't make. The sun rose yet again, and I wished that I had had the ability to sleep, to take some of the confusion away even if for just a little while, and rest my weary being.

Alternately, I again tried to turn it all off, and after having contemplated all of my questions hundreds of times over again during the time that I'd been sitting on that boulder in the wilderness, I finally found some peace as I focused on the small sounds around me. I focused on the gentle breeze and the noises it made against individual pine needles on the trees many feet down the mountainside. I focused on the small tree creatures, and in the distance, the pack of wolves scavenging for food. I basked in the peace for a long chunk of time, purposely restraining my mind from counting the seconds, minutes or hours.

When twilight had come for the third time since I first sat on the rock, I stood, inhaled the thin, crisp night air, and made my way back to the road's end, where I had left my car a few days prior. Before reaching the road, I hunted, taking down two, large bull moose.

Once back in my car, I turned my cell phone back on and was alerted to four texts and five voice mails. I read the texts first—three from Alice, one from Jasper.

_Talked to Bella at school; we're going to be best of friends._ Sent the day after I'd left.

_Edward, answer your phone. Newton's going to swipe in and take your girl if you stay away much longer._ Yesterday.

I had another from her and Jasper within ten minutes of each other this afternoon.

Alice's was more obnoxious. _Get home, idiot._

_Ed, come home. Time to man-up. Trouble's brewing-don't have to be an empath to feel the strange current in the air. -J_

I frowned at the last one. As I pondered what he could have possibly meant by "trouble's brewing," I listened to their voice mails.

"Edward, it's Alice. When you're done romping through the northern Canadian Rockies please call me so I can tell you how awesome Bella is."

"Alice again. Newton's making a move, Ed. She's a smart girl—she'll never go for him, but still. She thinks you hate her. Come home and get busy with this acclimation crap so you can fall in love with her already. Future's bright, but only if you come home—" And her message was cut off. I sighed, shaking my head as I erased it and listened to the next.

"Edward, it's Jasper. Things are brewing, and Alice can't see what's going to happen. Sounds strange, but something just isn't right, and it feels like you need to be here...come home, man." That was from yesterday.

What on earth was going on?

And from this morning, I had two messages.

"Edward, you need to come home immediately. I can't see what's going to happen; I don't know why, but Jazz and I can both feel some kind of strange, ominous force. You'll get this message at nine tonight, and you need to be in school tomorrow, so book it, brother of mine."

"Edward, come home now. You need to be in school tomorrow." Jasper sounded exactly like Alice. I sighed and hit my second speed dial button.

"Edward, I'm glad to see you finally rejoined the land of the living," Alice's irritated voice rang through my head.

I didn't bother pointing out to her the obvious flaw of her statement. "Yes, Alice. I'm leaving now."

"See you in seven hours," she said, and the line went dead.

I took in another deep, stabilizing breath and began the drive home. I still felt overwhelmed and a little frightened, but much more relaxed about the situation now that I'd had time to ponder it. I was still apprehensive about why Jasper and Alice were so intent upon having me in school the next day, but I felt more emotionally grounded to be able to handle whatever it was.

I'd been slightly surprised that Carlisle hadn't called while I was away, and I tried to push down the immediate anger that I felt about him keeping Marie a secret from me—whoever she had been in my past life.

I arrived back in Forks with barely enough time to shower and change my clothes before I was off to school, trailing several minutes behind my siblings. I was irritated at being late, but as I stepped out of my car, I saw Bella just getting out of her small death-trap of a vehicle. She was retrieving her backpack from the backseat when, at the same moment, I heard the screeching of tires and saw a van spin out of control; Bella was directly in its path.

I had parked several places down from her, and didn't stop to think about whether or not anyone was around; with my unnatural speed, I plowed into Bella, trying to keep the impact as light as possible as I pushed her backpack from her hand to hit the ground beneath her and cushion the blow of her head as it hit the bag instead of the pavement. I breathed a sigh of relief when I, not only didn't hear any crunching of bones, but also failed to smell any fresh blood. Her scent, live and potent, would have more than likely unlocked the monster from its cage. The mere thought of that had caused venom to pool in my mouth.

My throat burned painfully as my body pressed into hers, and my hand darted out to stop the van from rolling over the top of us. Our eyes met, hers wide with shock. Her brown, bottomless orbs made something twitch within my dead, empty chest, and the mysterious gravity pulled me to her. It was a force very nearly beyond what I could resist, and surprisingly enough, it wasn't entirely my bloodlust, but an almost equal combination of thirst for her delectable, life-giving liquid and a much different thirst—a thirst to be near her, to learn about her, to tell her my every secret, somehow knowing that she would accept me, regardless.

Lost in my thoughts, I tensed when her soft, warm hand cupped my cheek, startling me. She gasped, looking to her hand and then back to my eyes, but she didn't pull away.

"You're so cold, Edward."

We hadn't been introduced, yet, not really, but she spoke to me as though we were old acquaintances—friends even. It was disturbing, puzzling, and almost strangely wonderful.

And then the monster fought for its freedom, clawing at my throat and spurting venom from my glands, and I froze. "Bella," I choked out, "move your hand, please." With the small, wonderful warmth gently cradling my face, the veins of her wrist were mere millimeters from my teeth, and that fact drove the monster mad with want and need.

She pulled her hand away quickly, her eyes flashing with regret, embarrassment and rejection. I tried to smile at her, to reassure her that it wasn't her, that I had really very much enjoyed the contact, but it was impossible as I fought to maintain my control.

Her body was whisked away from me then, and it was the oddest of times for my wish to come true. I was thrown from the present into a memory of my former life, and if my heart had been alive and beating, it surely would have stopped in that moment.

_They pulled her away from me, and my knees hit the hard, tiled floor. My mind barely registered the pain as a strong, cold hand clasped onto my shoulder._

"_She's gone, Edward."_

"_No!" I screamed through angry, desperate tears. "She is my everything! She can't be gone. Bring her back. Do something to bring her back! I need her."_

_The face was hovering a few feet above me as I sobbed on my knees. It was blurred from my teary vision, but I could see that his eyes were compassionate. _

"_It's too late. I'm so sorry."_

"_No." The one word was a strange, strangled cross between a moan and a wail as a loud sob escaped from somewhere in my aching lungs. It was followed by another small, broken and quiet sob. "No."_

"_Edward...you must get back into bed, my love."_

_I knew that voice. It was different than the owner of the cold hands; it was my mother. She looked pale and pasty and ill. She looked every bit as awful as I physically felt. But none of the physical pain remotely compared to the agony in my soul._

"_No," I whispered. "She's gone, Mom. Nothing else matters anymore."_

"Edward! Are you okay?" I was broken out of the horrible, painfully raw memory by the voice of Alice, playing human for me to cover my tracks. She knew perfectly well that I hadn't been injured.

I moaned a little for effect, though it didn't take much to make it sound real. Within me, my dead heart ached at the memory I'd just experienced.

Bella's eyes watched me carefully as I stood up from the pavement. They held concern and curiosity and...mischief? I couldn't tell exactly what that expression represented, and I wished yet again that I could see into her mind.

"Are you alright, Edward?" Bella asked, her voice soft and lovely and genuinely concerned for my well-being.

I smiled at her for the first time. "Yes, Bella. Are you okay? I ran into you kind of hard..." I figured that that was a safe statement to make—a human could have said that, right?

She nodded, eyes studying me again.

"Well, okay or not, you're both going to the ER," said a gruff EMT that I vaguely recognized from the hospital. She was older and not entirely pleasant to be around.

Bella groaned in response, and I couldn't help but throw her an amused smile. "I'll ride with you," I offered, sounding like a parent who was bribing a child with a treat. Only then did I question the wisdom of the idea, and my eyes darted toward Alice.

She simply smiled, and I took that as my affirmation that it would be okay for me to go with Bella—that I wouldn't end up killing her in the small, confined space in the back of the ambulance.

Bella nodded with a shy smile, cheeks flaming red, taunting me with the delicious, increased blood flow just beneath the surface of her skin. "Alright," she agreed.

I quickly surveyed the minds of those around us— no suspicious thoughts, only those of relief and worry. I threw another quick glance at Alice's joyful, satisfied face before climbing into the back of the ambulance behind Bella.

My face was mere inches from hers, and the burning flared in my throat, but I managed a smile. It was getting easier to resist the desire to steal her blood, her life.

"Sure you're okay?" I asked quietly.

She frowned at me, but nodded. "Because of you...but how—"

"I was standing right next to you, Bella," I interrupted her slowly, darting my eyes from hers to the paramedic, hoping she'd understand my unspoken plea.

She glanced at the third person in the space with us and then back at me. "Thank you for getting me out of the way."

Her eyes swam with unanswered questions, but I smiled at her. "Of course, Bella. I'm just glad that I was there in time," I responded, genuinely meaning it.

Bella still didn't buy my coverup— that much was plainly written on her expressions— but she was playing along with me for now, which stirred something inside of me.

"Me too," she whispered and graced me with her beautiful smile.

We were at the ER in no time at all, and I went with Bella to the exam room, sending a very quick text message to Carlisle, asking that he come to us before any of the other attending doctors arrived. He responded quickly and was walking through the door just moments after.

Nothing could have prepared me for what had happened when he did. Carlisle and Bella locked gazes, and they both gasped in surprise.

"Dr. Cullen," Bella whispered in an awed, maybe even frightened, confusion.

Carlisle's mind flashed with his perfect memory of Bella—no—it was Marie again. His memory flashed with a scene that I had less than an hour ago relieved in my own mind, only through Carlisle's mind, I saw my broken, human self on my knees, shaking with sobs of grief. I was momentarily stunned by the clear, crisp and wholly agonizing picture in his thoughts before he glanced at me and blocked his mind again as he cleared his throat and smiled at the girl next to me. "And you must be Bella."

**A/N: Another big thanks to JadeMoon—you're my beta queen! :-)**

**Thanks for the reviews as well. I'm so intrigued by some of you guys' guesses as to what the heck is going on with these guys...would love to hear more from you!! :-)**

**Also, I have a new story recommend up for this week on my profile, so check that out if you get the chance. :-)**


	4. Chapter 4 Distractions

**Chapter 4- Distractions**

**Bella's POV**

The drive home was a quick seven blocks; in all reality, I probably could have walked to school, but the idea of walking in the rain everyday was not a pleasant prospect. I noted the absence of Charlie's police car before unlocking the front door to the house, dropping my coat, shoes and backpack just inside the door of my room and heading back downstairs to start dinner.

My mind and emotions were overwhelmed at everything that hand transpired that day. I hadn't truly had time to process it all, but my thoughts and feelings were all over the place. I felt strangely discontent; my world had been altered in a strange way today—or perhaps it was really the previous night that the altercation had taken place. The dream had been the beginning of it all. There was no explanation for why I had dreamed of Edward Cullen prior to ever meeting him, ever seeing him with my own eyes. I was frightened by the reasoning, frightened by the so many unknowns swirling within my brain.

Without paying much attention to the tasks my hands performed in preparing the steak and potatoes for our dinner, I had the meat and vegetables in the oven in little time. I paced around the kitchen, attempting to take inventory on what my dad had available to cook and bake with and what I would need to pick up from the store. He'd never been one for cooking, and I doubted I would find much other than fish, steak, and beer. The task of discovering the cupboard and fridge contents was a lost cause; I couldn't focus on it for more than a few seconds before my mind would fall to Edward, the dream, and the memories that weren't mine. I couldn't even focus on any of that for long. My head raced onto a new disconcerting image every several seconds, and not only the images, past and present, but the speed at which my mind tried to process them left me completely exhausted.

I was beginning to pull dishes out of the cupboard when the opening of the door startled me, and I jumped, dropping the plates. My head darted toward the back door to see my dad, eyes wide and concerned.

"Sorry, Bella. I didn't mean to startle you." His frown deepened as he looked at me. "Are you okay?"

I nodded and glanced down at the counter top, relief flooding me when I realized that the plates hadn't broken. I gingerly picked them up and walked them to the table. "Yeah, Dad, I'm okay."

From my peripheral vision, I could see him removing his gun belt and hanging it by the door along with his coat, and he kicked his boots off. He walked in and immediately sat at the table, and I took both the steaks and potatoes out of the oven, fixing them upon our plates. I could feel Charlie's eyes on me as I worked to get our dinner ready.

"How was school?"

I tried to avoid making eye contact with him and cleared my throat as I sat across the table from where he sat. "Uh, it was fine."

"Bella, you've always been a terrible liar. Bad day? Are you having a hard time transitioning? Were they mean to you, Bella?"

I couldn't help but laugh as I shook my head, finally allowing myself to meet his gaze. The concern that I found in his eyes was heartwarming to me, and it brought a level of comfort that was somewhat surprising. "No, everyone was very welcoming. I guess it is just the transition. That, and I didn't sleep well last night, so I had kind of a hard time focusing today."

He nodded thoughtfully, stuffing his mouth with a bite of steak.

I frowned as my mind focused on its most popular topic of the day: Edward. "Dad, do you know much about the Cullens?"

My father's brown eyes met mine again, and they were full of surprise. "'s family? No, I don't know too much about them. They moved here last summer. I was worried about them at first; they're awfully young to have a houseful of teenagers, foster children no less, but I've not had a single problem from any of them. is a brilliant man—I don't know how our two-bit town was lucky enough to nab him."

I smiled at his choice of words. "Their kids all seem kind of distant in school...no one really hangs out with them or anything."

I was surprised when Charlie's forehead crinkled into an angry frown, shaking his head. "People here don't accept change very well, Bella; they don't accept new people, different people. I tell you, I've had more problems dealing with kids whose families have lived here for generations than I have with those Cullen kids. I don't want you treating them that way, okay, Bella? Try to treat them the way that you want people to treat you."

I was almost insulted but reminded myself of where Charlie's heart was in saying those things. I smiled and nodded. "I...I tried to talk to Edward Cullen today. He's my lab partner in biology. He wasn't very thrilled with the idea of conversation, I guess." I pushed my potatoes around my plate with my fork. "But I did talk to Alice Cullen...sort of, I guess. She seemed very friendly."

He smiled. "Well, I hope that you're able to make friends with them, Bells. You just be careful around those boys—any boys for that matter," he grumbled.

I briefly touched his hand with mine and smiled. "Sure, Dad. Sure."

His wrinkled grin returned, and he shook his head. "Alright. Well, at least give me a fairly decent heads up before springing them on me, okay?"

I nodded and stood, grabbing my plate and kissing him on the cheek as I made my way to the trash to dispose of my nearly uneaten meal. My stomach was just too nervous to handle any kind of food. "Is it okay if I make a trip to the grocery store tomorrow after school?"

"Yeah, there's grocery money up in the jar above the fridge. I'll try to keep it full for you."

I smiled. "Alright. I'm gonna go upstairs and work on my homework. I'll be back down to do the dishes after I'm done."

He waved his hand at me. "No, don't worry about them. You cooked, I'll get the dishes."

I grinned at him. "Okay, thanks."

I darted up the creaky, wooden stairs to my room. I was thankful to have had a nice conversation with Charlie—a distraction from the tornado of confusion in my mind and heart, even within my soul. It took me probably twice the amount of time that it should have to complete my biology assignment, and finally, I threw the bag and notebook roughly into my backpack and plopped down onto my fully made bed with a sigh.

My restlessness kept me from staying there long, and I busied myself with preparing for bed. Once under the covers, my mind swirled with thoughts of the day. I went over my dream in my mind again, going over the memories, the encounter with Edward and his rude behavior. As my mind focused on more details of the day, the angrier I became. Who did Edward Cullen think he was, behaving so rudely to me? What right did he have to judge me so quickly without taking the time to speak to me and before deciding that it wasn't worth his time to even try and be nice? Was it possible that he judged me based on who I had talked to and eaten lunch with that day? Granted, Jessica certainly wasn't free of her own negative opinions toward the Cullens, but would he really hate me so badly simply because I'd eaten lunch with her? No explanation that I could contrive seemed to make much sense with the situation.

The longer that I pondered his behavior, the more confused and upset I became. I was determined to confront him the next day. There was absolutely no excuse for the two of us not to be civil toward one another. If anyone should have been granted an aversion, it should have been me. With his strange, obnoxious behavior, coupled with my freakishly disturbing dreams and memories, I had every reason to be wary of him. Why was it, then, that all that I wanted was for him to talk to me and to maybe get a peek at his smile. I would bet it was just as gorgeous as the rest of him.

I sighed, beat some imaginary lumps from my pillow, and waited. How long it took for sleep to find me, I wasn't sure. It felt as if a week had gone by in that one night before I succumbed to unconsciousness.

However, I again found myself without rest in that slumber; I was thrown into an all-too-real simulation of some alternate life, some alternate place, and I was frightened and sad, though not alone.

"_I don't want you to go," I sighed, trying to hold back the tears that threatened to spill over. I didn't want to cry in front of him now, though I had done so many times before. His arm tightened around my shoulders as we sat in the sun on a quilt in a wide open field of grass._

"_Sweetheart, we have talked about this. I will be so much more able to take care of you if I can get a degree. I would very much like to follow in our fathers' footsteps."_

_I sighed again. "Can't you go to school here? Then you could work with them like you are now, Edward...and...and..." Tears began to spill over. "And then we could still be together. I think I shall die without you, Edward."_

"_Marie, you mustn't say things like that. Don't even think them." His green eyes flared with anger before softening, and he turned to face me, capturing my face between both of his large hands and rubbing his thumbs across my moistened cheeks. His eyes penetrated mine, intense and almost brooding. "Are you serious? Is it that important to you that I stay here, Marie? Because if it is, I will. I will do anything for you. If you need me to go to school here, then I will."_

_I nodded desperately. "Please. Or take me with you. I can't be without you."_

_He smiled, and it was the rueful, beautiful smile that I had come to know very well throughout our years. "Now, my love, think about the absolute scandal that we would cause if I were to take you along with me. That wouldn't bode well, would it?"_

_I grinned. "I don't care. I'm going to marry you, and I love you, and I couldn't care less what people think about us."_

_Edward's eyes softened again, dancing gently in the sunlight. His palm fully cupped my cheek, and I leaned into it. "I'll stay, Marie," he whispered. "Actually, I had applied to the university several months back...I didn't think I'd be able to leave you, either, my love. I'll stay."_

_I lunged at him, my arms wrapping tightly around his neck and plowing him over onto his back. He chuckled underneath me, and our eyes met, locked into a gaze that lasted for several moments. "Edward, do we have to wait until you're done with school to get married?"_

_All playfulness erased from his face, and he lifted his head to meet my lips in a chaste, but wonderful, kiss. "No. I spoke to my parents about that, and they'll be buying us a house. They were planning on it anyway. And of course I'll have my job at the firm while attending school, and we'll be able to be comfortable until I graduate. You and our mothers need to figure out how soon you can have a wedding planned, because I want to marry you in the very near future, love."_

_Propriety was the furthest from my mind in that moment; I smashed my lips to his, and to my delight, he responded with a vigor that he very rarely allowed. His muscular arms pushed me off of him and onto my back without breaking our kiss, and his tongue swept across my bottom lip as he hovered over me. I gasped, butterflies coming to life in my stomach as his hands planted against me, one behind my neck and the other firmly on my waist. _

_I opened my mouth to him, and the feeling of his tongue against mine was unlike anything I'd ever imagined or dreamed of. My fingers tangled in his hair and he pulled back for a moment, beautiful emerald eyes intent upon my own yet again. "I love you," he said firmly. _

"_I love _you_," I responded without hesitancy._

_He kissed my cheek, and his warm breath was at my ear. He sighed, "Bella."_

My breathing was hard as my heart pounded in the walls of my chest. He had said _Bella_. Edward said _Bella_, not _Marie_. What did that mean? Was my mind playing tricks on me? Had I been too crazily submerged in the guessing game of these strange events? What was that, anyway? He'd been so deeply in love with her. Who was she? And why was I dreaming of her as if she were me? Clearly Edward wanted nothing to do with me, but in these dreams...

In the dreams, in the memories, he was a man in love. He was still a child according to today's standards, just starting out with college ahead and marriage a very distant idea, maybe even desire, but not in the dream. In the dream there was something fundamentally different—the other dream and memories, too, for that matter. They were all long ago. The styles of clothing, hair, architecture, even speaking and elocution...they were all so _old_. The young Edward of my dreams was already a man, a man prepared to work and save and marry and take care of the woman that he loved. And she was ready to surrender herself to him, to be everything and anything that he wanted and needed. It was so long ago. Who was the girl?

I sighed, running my hand through my hair and looking at my alarm clock. I still had an hour before it would go off, but knowing that I wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, I flipped the light on and grabbed my journal and pen, letting my thoughts and feelings and full detail of the dream that I'd just had flow onto the cream paper beneath my hand.

I filled many more pages than usual, which, given my state of mind, didn't exactly surprise me. I sighed and closed it, placing it back in my desk drawer and preparing for the day. I had decided to arrive at school a bit early in hopes of catching Edward in the parking lot. I needed to confront him before I lost my nerve to do so.

I waited in the cold rain for Edward to arrive, my jacket hood draped over my head. His siblings arrived with out him, all stepping out of a Jeep raised ridiculously high off the ground. Each pair of eyes focused on me for a moment before they all headed inside of the school, both pairs holding hands and whispering to one another.

Watching them walk away gave me such an odd sensation. It wasn't at all like the gravitational pull I felt toward Edward, but it was similar in that I wanted to know them. I wanted to talk with them, to learn about them, to understand why they were different in such obvious, yet undefinable ways. I sighed, grabbing my bag and heading to my first period class. I tried to be polite and listen to Eric's jabber throughout the hour, but I found it increasingly difficult to focus.

Where was Edward? Why wasn't he at school? It was possible that he had been sick; that would have been a logical explanation, though it seemed unlikely piled together with everything else that had happened yesterday. Was he avoiding me?

I trudged my way through the wet grass to the English building, feeling as subdued as the gray clouds above me that were crying rain from the sky.

"Bella!"

I took in a deep breath and forced a smile before turning back to see Mike. "Hi, Mike."

"You getting the hang of things around here?"

His friendly smile charmed me into a more genuine smile of my own, and I almost forgot why I had decided the previous day not to like him. "Yeah, getting there."

His grin widened as he fell into step with me. "So hey, I wanted to ask you. Would you like to go out with me Friday night? I was thinking we could go to dinner and maybe catch a movie in Port Angeles?"

My heart screamed no, that it was unavailable. What an odd feeling to have in the moment, because it was the farthest from the truth, and really, Mike had been nothing but nice to me; it was just his opinions of other certain people that bothered me. But that particular person in which he had indirectly focused his rude comment on had, in turn, been rude to me the same day.

I smiled at Mike. "Sure, I think that'd be fun, Mike."

"Awesome. So I'll pick you up at around five on Friday. Would that be okay?"

"Sure, that sounds fine," I said as we walked into the classroom. Mike was grinning like a child on Christmas morning as we took our seats, and Jessica, already seated, glared daggers at me. I bit my bottom lip nervously. Perhaps I'd overstepped some boundary—was Jessica after Mike as well as Edward? Or perhaps just Mike, as he was the more obtainable of the two? I sighed. I wasn't up for dealing with the petty condescension from her today. I'd had enough of that from Edward the previous day. I deserved to be happy in this small, dreary town, and if a date with Mike would be enjoyable, then why not? Maybe I'd even end up liking him. Forget everyone else.

As the thoughts danced through my mind, I knew I didn't honestly feel that way. I did care. As shallow as Jessica may be, I didn't want to anger her. And as rude as Edward had been to me yesterday, I still wanted to know him, wanted to understand him. Perhaps getting to know him would help me understand the strange dreams. Perhaps it was all just a psychosomatic transference of my desire to be close to someone, to have someone love me as much as the Edward of my dreams loved his strange and mysterious Marie.

I somewhat absentmindedly worked through the day until lunch, receiving gleeful smiles from Mike, death-wish glares from Jessica and curious looks from other boys and girls with whom I shared classes. I was walking toward the cafeteria with my new shadow, Mike, when Alice Cullen danced in front of my path.

"Hello, Bella." Her smile was friendly, her voice perfect and melodic.

I couldn't help but smile at her. "Hi, Alice."

"Hey, would you like to eat lunch with me today? Emmett, Rosalie and Jasper had to leave early, and I was wondering if maybe you and I could use that time to get to know one another," she said with a playful wink.

I glanced at Mike, who looked rather irritated at the proposal, but I smiled at him apologetically, not willing to miss the opportunity to talk to Alice. "I'll catch up with you later?"

His eyes darted toward me in surprise, and he forced a tight smile. "Okay. Talk to you later, Bella." And with that he was gone.

Alice hooked her hand onto my sweatshirt-clad elbow, and we walked to the cafeteria. She stood before me in the lunch line, face twisted in a bit of a grimace. "Hm...which of this stuff do you like, Bella?"

I looked at her in surprise. "I don't know. I think I'm just going to get a slice of pizza. What about you?"

Her golden eyes danced around happily. "I'm on a bit of a diet."

I scoffed. She was tiny; certainly she, of all people, had no need for a diet. "A diet?" I repeated.

She grinned again. "Yep. I loathe cafeteria food," she said with a giggle, and I had to smile in response. I couldn't blame her.

I paid for my pizza, and we took a table toward the back of the large hall. I took a big bite off the end of the slice and met her gaze. A permanent smile was plastered on her face.

"I'm so glad you're finally here," she sighed, resting her chin in her hand.

My eyebrows rose at that. "What do you mean, Alice?"

"I've been waiting a long time for you, Bella Swan. But never mind that right now. We're going to be the best of friends, and I'm so excited for that!"

She was a rather strange girl, I had to agree with Jessica about that. Though Jessica's tone leaned more toward the malicious disdain of thinking Alice weird, I, myself, was rather charmed by her strange words and mannerisms.

"How do you know that?"

She shrugged, grin never leaving her face. "I just know things—get senses about them, that sort of thing," she said it as if it were the most natural thing in the world to 'know' things. How peculiar.

"So you've sensed that you and I will be good friends?"

"_Best_ friends," she corrected. "I've seen it."

My brow furrowed. "You've seen it?"

She nodded. "Don't worry about it right now, Bella. It'll all make sense soon, and you really should work your way into it gradually," she said with a giggle.

I felt my forehead deepen into my frown. "Work my way into what? Oh God, please don't tell me you guys are in a cult or something, because I really don't think I'd be able to handle—"

Her laughter cut off my words. "No, Bella. It's nothing like that. So, you're going out with Mike Newton on Friday night, huh?"

My mind, which had quite enjoyed the rest from the pounding onslaught of thoughts of Edward and Marie, was slowly resuming its spinning again. "How did you know about that? Your weird sense of things or something?"

She grinned. "No, honey, this is a very small town, and Newton's told everyone about your date already."

"Oh." I wasn't quite sure why that bothered me like it did. Why was he telling everyone about that?

"Boys will be boys." She rolled her eyes.

I smiled. "Speaking of boys, are your siblings sick today, or what?" I tried to sound nonchalant about it but failed miserably.

"No, they went camping. Edward left early, and the rest of them left right before the lunch hour to join him. I usually go but opted out this time around."

I nodded, confused by everything all the more.

Alice's face turned serious. "Listen, I know Edward can be rough around the edges, but he has his reasons, just as you have yours for what you think of him at this moment. Be patient with him, though. He's been through a lot, and he didn't intentionally hurt your feelings yesterday. He doesn't hate you."

"How did you know that I was thinking that?" I whispered, feeling incredibly awed and vulnerable.

She smiled softly. "I just know, Bella. Just as I know that you and I will be great friends, I also know that you and Edward will be very close eventually as well."

I suddenly felt brave in being honest with this strange girl. "I've never met Edward before yesterday, Alice, yet the night before last I dreamt of him. In detail." I sounded completely crazy but somehow knew she wouldn't think me as such.

Her eyes widened slightly. "Really?"

I nodded. "But...but in my dreams he has green eyes, not..." My voice was quiet, nearly choked with my anxiety. "Not black."

Alice's lips twitched slightly, as if she wanted to smile. "What was the dream about, Bella?"

I shook my head. "It was really strange. Edward was talking to me, but I was someone else. My name was Marie." Upon hearing the name her eyes widened even more, but I continued. "In part of the dream he was telling me he loved me, and we were both happy. In the other part of the dream I was sick; I could actually feel the sickness through my dream, and he was crying, telling me to be strong, that I had to get better. And then last night...I dreamed that we were in a field and I was begging him not to leave for college. I don't know where he was going to go or when, but I was desperate for him to stay, and then he told me we could get married sooner that we'd originally intended."

Alice shook her head. "Wow. I don't know what to make of that..."

"You," I hesitated for a moment, "you don't think I'm completely crazy?"

"No, Bella, not crazy. Something strange is definitely going on, but...well, I think there are a great many things in this world that you would think are crazy—things that go on everyday that many people are totally oblivious of."

I frowned, trying to make sense of her words. "Alice...I really don't understand what you're trying to tell me."

She grinned. "I know. You will."

The loud shrill of the bell signaling the end of the lunch hour startled me, and I jumped.

I hesitated a moment as I stood from the lunch table. "Do you think...do you think Edward will need notes from biology? I could send them home with you..." I didn't know why I felt so silly about offering such a thing.

Alice grinned. "You really are a sweetheart, Bella Swan. You're perfect." Her smile turned amused. "And yes, I'm sure he'd appreciate the biology notes."

I nodded, half-smiling through my confusion. "Okay. Well, I'll catch up with you after school then." Then another idea hit me. "Wait! Your family left. Do you need a ride home this afternoon?"

She jumped with a squeal. "Yes, Bella! That'd be fabulous. I'll meet you outside after class?"

I nodded; it was my turn to throw an amused smile.

The rest of the day consisted of Mike writing notes to me and Jessica and her friends glaring. I thought of my conversation with Alice, which only added to the confusion that I felt . She added to the strangeness of the situation, to the surreal sensations of my life in Forks, which was quickly instigating my pondering on if any of this was truly real, or if I would wake up in my bed in Phoenix after one long, incredibly bizarre dream.

I drove Alice home after school. The Cullens lived out of town; I'd almost missed their turnoff, even when Alice had pointed it out. The drive to their home was long and swerved through the green forest outside of Forks. My sharp intake of breath did not go unnoticed by Alice when we rounded a bend to a view of a monstrously large, white and modern home set against a beautifully landscaped yard.

Alice smiled. "Home, sweet home. I'd invite you in, Bella, but it's not time for that yet. You should go home so you can get your grocery shopping done," she winked. "See you tomorrow, honey." And with that, she was gone in almost a blur.

I shook off the strange sensation and goosebumps that arose from her exit and sighed. I was completely exhausted and overwhelmed, but she had been right, of course. I did need to go grocery shopping if Charlie and I were to have anything other than trout for dinner.

The night went much the same as the previous one did, though before bed, I did something that I had never done before; I took a sleeping pill that I'd purchased along with the groceries this afternoon. I'd never been one to need a ton of sleep, but with the last three restless nights, I did need some rest. I slept soundly, without dreams and without memories, and woke feeling fully rested, though somewhat off-balance still.

***

A week. Nearly a full school week had passed, and Edward had not come back. His absence made me edgy in a way that I couldn't quite understand or make any kind of logical sense from. I had again taken a sleeping pill on Thursday evening, so Friday, when I awoke from a deep sleep and my eyes squinted toward the alarm clock, I jolted out of bed with a start. I had twenty minutes to get to school on time, and I rushed through my routine as quickly as I could in my half-groggy state.

The roads were slick from the cold rain, and I drove as quickly as I felt comfortable with under the conditions. I arrived late, forced to park in the very back of the student parking lot. I sighed, grabbing my bag and turning to lock my car. I noticed Edward stepping out of his car several spaces down from me, my mind rushing with a million thoughts as my surprise at seeing him nearly crippled me.

Everything happened so quickly after that. I heard the squealing of tires and looked up to see a van spinning out of control; I was directly in its path. Before I could even panic or brace myself for impact, I was knocked down to the ground by a rock-solid wall that pinned me to the pavement beside my car. It took a second for my brain to comprehend that the wall was Edward. His arm whipped out protectively and stopped the blue van in its path, just inches shy of running us over.

My eyes met his. They were golden today, just as Alice's were. The shock of that realization coupled with the fact that he had just saved my life hit me nearly as hard as the van would have, had he not protected me. His eyes were hard and cold for a moment, and I watched in morbid fascination as the gold orbs slowly receded to black and then back to gold again as his expression changed from a tortured grimace to a look of something I couldn't quite identify. It was softer, friendlier, and made my stomach flutter nervously.

Completely mesmerized and the world around us forgotten, I couldn't stop my hand from inching towards his face, cupping his cheek. I just wanted to touch him. When my skin made contact with his, I was jolted by the ice cold sensation that rocked through my nerves and couldn't contain my gasp. After the initial shock, I was enamored with the silkiness, yet complete hardness, of his beautifully pale skin.

I finally managed to make my voice work its way from my throat. "You're so cold, Edward."

He looked for a moment like he might have smiled at me before his eyes went black again, and he tensed. His voice was amazingly beautiful—much the same as it was in my dreams, only really ringing through my ears in that moment. However, his strained expression and his choked words startled me.

"Bella, move your hand, please."

That one sentence embarrassed me beyond belief. I had forgotten that he hated me. I had forgotten that I felt like I knew him because of my dreams, not because of any interaction we'd actually had together in reality. I jerked my hand away quickly, my humiliation and regret washing over me.

I didn't have much time to relish in the anguish, because only seconds later I was being pulled away from him.

"Are you okay?" A masculine woman asked me.

I nodded dumbly, unable to say anything as what had just happened sank in. I watched Edward; he was in the same position as he had been only moments ago. His eyes were glazed over, and he had a far-off expression on his face. I was caught up in his total beauty as I was poked and prodded by the emergency worker.

"Edward!" I turned toward that voice. It was Alice. "Are you okay?" Her expression certainly didn't match her overly concerned voice—it was as if she knew he was fine without asking, without looking, without even knowing what had happened, and without realizing that we'd both been nearly crushed by a large vehicle. I wondered at that and filed it away to think about later.

Edward moaned as he stood. Perhaps he was hurt. If he'd hurt himself for me, I'd never forgive myself. "_Are_ you okay, Edward?" I loved saying his name. It was beautiful.

His eyes found mine, and he smiled an amazingly breathtaking smile. My heart fluttered in response as I felt a huge gravitational pull toward him once again. "Yes, Bella," his beautiful velvet voice responded. "Are _you_ okay? I ran into you kind of hard..."

I nodded as I took in his voice and tone. How had he gotten to me so quickly? Even a sprinter or someone with incredibly fast reflexes wouldn't have been able to do what Edward had done for me. Not to mention the fact that he'd stopped the huge van from toppling onto the both of us using only his arm.

"Well, okay or not, you're both going to the ER," the woman who had been checking my vitals and pupils said in a gruff and demanding voice. I groaned; I hated hospitals. I'd spent enough time within the walls of that kind of institution that I didn't care if I never had to go to another.

Edward smiled at me again, and if it hadn't been so damn beautiful, I would have been angry that he seemed amused by me having to get in the ambulance and go to the hospital.

"I'll ride with you," he offered, and again, had he not been so gorgeous and sweet-sounding, I would have probably felt rather indignant that he had made that offer sound very much like a bribe. Arrogant bastard.

I smiled at him, unable to mask the excitement that I felt at the idea of being with Edward, of that fact that he was actually speaking to me, smiling at me. "Alright," I choked out as my cheeks flamed with heat.

The EMT climbed in first and helped me inside. Edward crawled in after me, and when I turned around his face was so incredibly close to mine. His scent was amazingly sweet and intoxicating. Maybe I had hit my head? Surely no one could smell as amazing as he did in that moment.

His eyes were gold again and so very intense. "Sure you're okay?" he asked quietly.

My eyebrows furrowed as I was again reminded of what he had done. I nodded in response to his question. "Because of you...but how—"

"I was standing right next to you, Bella," he said quickly. His eyes were pleading with me for something I didn't understand. He wanted me to agree with him, though we both knew that he hadn't been standing right next to me? His eyes darted to the EMT, and my eyes followed, then met back with his once again.

"Thank you for getting me out of the way," I said, genuinely wanting him to know how much I appreciated his quick reflexes, no matter what the circumstances were.

He smiled at me, again setting my stomach reeling with nerves. "Of course, Bella. I'm just glad that I was there in time." Edward's golden eyes were so soft and gentle; I was completely captivated by him.

He was something different. Alice's words about not knowing of things in the world around us came back into my mind momentarily. I wondered if she was trying to tell me something. Who was Edward Cullen? _What_ was Edward Cullen?

I smiled at him in spite of my uncertainty. "Me too." My voice wasn't much past a whisper, but it was all the volume I could manage in the strange moment.

It didn't take us long to reach the hospital. Edward came to the examination room with me, and moments later the doctor walked in. I'd been watching Edward, so when my peripheral vision caught the beautiful form before me, I glanced fully at it and gasped at his face. I knew that face; I had dreamed of it.

"Dr. Cullen," I whispered breathlessly.

Something flashed in his eyes. Was that recognition that I saw? It was gone as fast as it had come, and he smiled brilliantly at me. His voice as smooth and wonderful as Edward's. "And you must be Bella."

My mind flashed with a white light, and I was laying down now, drenched in sweat and aching all over.

"_Dr. Cullen," I rasped, and he grabbed my hand. It was so cold. But then, everyone's had been. I was so very sick, so very fevered. "Am I going to die?"_

_His eyes were soft and gentle as the brows above them met in a frown. "I don't know, Marie. There's still a chance you could get better."_

_I shook my head. "I won't; I can feel that I won't...please...please save Edward."_

_His eyes flashed for a moment, and his frown deepened. "I'll try, Marie."_

_I nodded. "You...you're different. Elizabeth noticed that, too, Dr. Cullen. Do for Edward what no one else here can do for him. Please? Please save him?"_

_His eyes looked like they would cry if they could. He nodded and repeated the phrase, "I'll try."_

My heart was beating so fast as my vision came back into focus and both beautiful males stared at me with concern.

"Are you alright, Bella? Did you hit your head when you fell?"

Edward sighed beside me. "She didn't hit her head, Carlisle." His voice was no longer sweet, but irritated and annoyed. What had caused the sudden shift?

I risked a glance at him, and his jaw was taut, eyes angry and steeled.

Dr. Cullen seemed to be ignoring him for the moment, but he looked at me with the same concerned expression mixed with confusion, disbelief. "Amazing," he whispered.

I frowned at him. "What?"

He blinked and shook his head. "Mar—Bella, do you feel any pain anywhere?"

_Whoa. Wait a minute._ My mind raced crazily at his slip. Marie. He knew Marie. What the hell was going on? "Dr. Cullen..." I said hesitantly, staring into his golden eyes. Golden eyes. They all had them. Exactly who was this family?

"Bella, I need you to answer a few routine questions now." His voice was commanding and professional, all confusion erased. It snapped me back into focus fully. I sighed.

"Okay."

"Bella!" My head whipped around to the door as my father walked through, looking angry and frightened.

"I'm okay, Dad."

"What the hell happened?"

I shook my head. "I guess Tyler's van lost control. I was at my car, and he would have hit me if Edward hadn't knocked me out of the way."

My dad's eyes darted from me to Edward and then rested on Dr. Cullen. "Is she okay?"

Dr. Cullen nodded. "Yes, Charlie, she's fine. I want to finish the precautionary exam, but she didn't hit her head, and her vitals are good. She may be in shock for awhile."

Charlie nodded. I stared at Dr. Cullen for a moment, then at Edward, who still looked angry.

"Okay, well, Bells, I've got to go fill out some paperwork at the front desk. I'll be back to get you in a few minutes, alright?"

I nodded dumbly as he left and turned to Edward. "I'm confused."

His eyes locked on mine. "About what, Bella?"

My eyes went from his to his father's. _So many things, Edward,_ I admitted internally before sighing. I decided on the most obvious of things. "How did you get to me in time?"

Edward's eyes darted from mine to Carlisle's. "Bella, I was standing next to you."

Carlisle cleared his throat. "Okay, Bella, everything looks fine. You may be sore for a few days, and you can take aspirin or Tylenol as directed on the bottle until you're feeling better."

I nodded. "Alright."

"Can I take you home, Bella?" Edward asked quietly.

I frowned at him for a moment before nodding. I was feeling crazy and incapable of holding any kind of conversation. What was happening to me? Was it possible that I was losing my mind? Had the change between Phoenix and Washington just been too much for my consciousness? Did I have to resort to hallucinations to cope? I sighed as Dr. Cullen left the room, and Edward helped me down from the table.

His eyes searched mine for a long moment as if he were trying to find some hidden secret within them. "Bella..."

I didn't answer.

"Bella, stick with me, please? I was standing next to you, and we were very lucky that the van stopped when it did. Please. I need you to do this for me."

"Why? I don't understand what's happening?" My frustrations of everything piled into one, and I was on the verge of tears.

"Trust me."

Those two words hit me with the weight of a truck. My mind flashed, and I was in the field again; I was with Edward.

_His laugh rang out into the fresh, open air. It was contagious. He was hanging from a tree limb low to the ground, holding his hand out to me. "Trust me," he said, and I took his hand. I did trust him. I trusted him with my life._

I blinked into his concerned golden orbs. "Are you alright?"

I nodded. "Okay, Edward. You were standing right next to me."

He smiled just a hint of one. "Thank you."

"Bella—" I looked again to see my father. His eyes were focused on Edward. "Thank you, Edward. I am forever indebted to you. She is my life." My heart warmed at his words even in the midst of my befuddled turmoil.

Edward smiled softly. "I just did what I had to do, sir. I'm glad that I was in the right place at the right time."

Charlie smiled. "Me too, kid. Thank you."

"My pleasure, Chief Swan." He glanced at me and smiled again. "Would you be okay with me driving Bella home, sir? I will have my sister Alice bring her car home after school."

"Sure, kid, that's fine. Thank you, again."

I glanced in surprise at Edward after my father hugged me and left the room again.

He shrugged with a grin. "I'd like to get to know you, Bella."

I couldn't help but smile back, hating that, even with all the bizarre issues that involved him, I wanted the same thing. "Me too, Edward."

***

**A/N: First, a super big thanks to my beta JadeMoon—she's so wonderful at catching my mistakes. :-)**

**Also, I started a blog! I'm doing weekly reviews on different fics and have links to a whole bunch of awesome FF writers' blogs, so check it out! Link is on my profile page (as well as my twitter link, come follow me!)**

**So any new guesses yet? I have a couple of people who are so close to guessing what's going on, and I really love hearing your theories! :-) Shoot me a review and let me know what you think! :-)**


	5. Chapter 5 Gaurding Bella

**Chapter 5- Guarding Bella**

**Edward's POV**

Bella and I walked out of the exam room with Charlie. Emotions coursed through my body—emotions that I couldn't even label, let alone understand. The confusion was extremely frustrating. I felt, now more than ever, magnetized to the strange and shy girl walking next to me. She pulled at me, called to me, drew me in, and she wasn't the slightest bit aware of doing so. Her blood sang to me, but the connection, the appeal, was deeper, truer somehow. I stood to the side as she hugged her father awkwardly.

"I just have a few things to finish up at the station, Bells, if you're sure that you're alright? You'll be okay by yourself for a couple of hours?"

She frowned momentarily before nodding. "Yeah, actually dad, I told you I was going out tonight, right?"

Bella was going out? My mind quickly flashed through possibilities, and I prayed she was going out with one or more of the girls from school and not one of the hormone-crazed males of the high school population.

Charlie's frown was immediate as he grunted. "Oh. Yeah, I forgot about that. Are you sure you're up for that? Maybe you should stay home?" His eyes then traveled to me and when they met my own, an entirely new expression flitted across his face. The brown orbs, identical to his daughter's, traveled back to her. "It's okay if you want to back out; you've got the perfect reason, Bella."

In his mind swirled their conversation at their kitchen table. She was telling him of a date. A _date_. My head swarmed in a maddening buzz. So it was a boy. I felt nauseous, but I couldn't understand why it bothered me so much. She was just a girl; she was just a _human_ girl. What did I care what she did and with whom she did it? The thoughts and visuals that that statement brought to my mind nearly caused me to groan aloud in protest, but I swallowed it. I was well aware of each and every thing those boys fantasized about regarding Bella, the visuals they'd conjure—visuals I'd seen in their heads from the first day that Bella Swan walked into my life and spun it upside down.

Bella followed her father's gaze to me, where it lingered for a moment before returning to him with a frown. "Dad, I don't think that'd be very polite. I feel just fine. It would be rude to cancel on Mike with such short notice."

Mike Newton. Something inside of me twitched at the thought of him taking Bella, my Bella, out alone. _My_ Bella? Where had that come from? I had to suppress yet another groan at my ridiculous inner monologue. She certainly wasn't _my_ Bella, nor would she ever be. I was destined to my life of loneliness, apparently losing the only woman that I had ever loved over a century ago. I was now something that wouldn't mix with her kind—after all, what kind of woman could love a monster? Bella was good, that much was apparent. She would never love something so loathsome as me.

Charlie huffed, bringing my mind back to the conversation. "Okay, Bella. Just..." He hesitated, his displeased frown deepening. "Just be careful, alright?"

Bella's eyes softened, and she smiled at him, a smile that took my breath away. She was really amazingly beautiful. It was so strange to be drawn to a human in such a way. Perhaps it was the sweet fragrance of her blood flowing just beneath that delicate tissue that was her flesh and the fact that I had never smelled anything more desirous in my life. That must have been it. Everything else was simply ludicrous. I was what I was, and _what_ I was had one core baser instinct. That instinct was my drive, my identity, my thirst. The thought depressed me unfathomably.

"Yes, Dad. I love you," she said to him sweetly, her voice dancing through the air as he began toward the doors, mumbling a gruff return of her sentiment before walking out to the parking lot to his police car.

I turned to her; Bella's amazingly deep eyes looked at me as if to gauge something. Surely she wasn't worried about my reaction to her going out with Mike Newton! I didn't want the poor girl to get the wrong impression, to think that I had any interest in her— at least not in any romantic sense. Had I been like Newton, like any other normal, red-blooded male in our school with life in my veins and a beating heart, I very well may have pursued her until she couldn't resist, for she was that dazzling, that intriguing and spellbinding.

I offered her a smile and filled it with as much friendliness as I could muster. "Shall we?"

She nodded; it was a shy and rather appealing nod, causing those new spasms within my chest. Bella must have been similar to what _she_ was like, to trigger my memories and growing attraction. I would have to be careful around her, very careful with my emotions. Had I been wise, I would have stayed away from her altogether, but her beckoning force was just too great to resist. Perhaps I could have a friend—the first friend, apart from my family, that I'd had in my long and lonely vampire life.

I walked beside her to my Volvo, opening the passenger door for her, and once she was secure in the safety restraints, I pulled out onto the street. Her scent filled my car, my throat burning with demanding and unyielding thirst. Yet something somewhere inside of me had changed. When the change occurred, I knew not, but it was as if I somehow had a different control— a higher level of control possibly, and more developed. Everything within me shouted to keep this girl safe, keep her alive, keep that most frail human heart beating within her fragile human body. Perhaps she was the reason for my wretched existence—perhaps it was my destiny to keep her safe for however long she would walk this earth. Perhaps she somehow belonged to Marie in some way. It was a stretch, for destiny seemed a fantasy to me...but then, I supposed most would say the same for the existence of vampires and other creatures that go bump in the night.

"So, a date with Mike Newton. I wasn't sure which of them would end up asking you first." I tried to force a lightness, a companionable quality into my tone—it was a lightness I simply didn't feel. I didn't want her going with him tonight, for reasons I couldn't pinpoint or even begin to explain.

Bella's expression was apprehensive as she studied her long, fragile fingers. "Uhm, yeah. I mean, he asked, and I figured there wouldn't be much harm in trying to make some new friends. It's not exactly easy for me to be social."

I studied her for a moment before turning back to the road. "Bella, Mike Newton doesn't want to be your friend."

My perfect peripheral vision caught her frown. "How could you possibly know that?"

If I told her the truth in answering her question, she'd think me mad, without a doubt. "Because they're all the same. They all want the same things. You're better than that." I wasn't sure why the words were flowing out of me before my filter kicked in, but with her silent mind and her force almost impossible to ignore, my walls were dangerously lowered.

Her eyes darted toward me while I used every ounce of self-control to keep my eyes on the pavement before us. I longed to look at her face, to see the expression in her beautiful eyes. "How do you know that?" she asked again.

I sighed. "I just do, Bella. I'm a male; I'm well aware of how our perverted minds work," I huffed, hating to group myself with the depraved children I was surrounded by every day, but not wanting to set myself apart any further than my actions that day already had.

"No," she said softly, taking me by surprise, "I meant, how do you know that I'm better than that?"

I was floored for a moment, unable to think a complete thought or speak a coherent word. Did she think that she wasn't better than that? Surely she knew her worth, her value. I had only known her a week, had only spent just a few hours in her presence, and I could already see something different in her. I didn't need my mind-reading capabilities to see her pure heart, compassion and depth. Her heart was a familiar heart, and the unconstrained connection that I felt to it bolstered my deep desire to protect it. It was too rare, too precious to be left alone, to be left vulnerable to the hormonal sharks who attended Forks High.

I looked over at her for a moment to meet her expectant gaze. "Bella, it's not exactly something that I can explain. It's just something I know to be true. You're different than the average girl, the average person—you go deeper than they do. You deserve love and respect and someone who will take care of you and adore you.... Mike Newton is not capable of that. Neither are the rest of them, for that matter." I muttered the last sentence as her features contorted in a strange mix of confusion, amusement and something else—something I couldn't read or classify as easily.

She shook her head, and I had to remind myself to look back at the road, though I could still see it just fine through the sides of my vision.

"Do you know how incredibly nineteenth century you just sounded?" Her voice was playful and light, and I basked in it, wanting to feel what she must have felt in that moment as her emotions fell into her amused words.

My mouth twitched with a smile. She was close to being spot on. Very close. "Well, some principles should never die."

Her face was fully pointed toward me now, and I risked a glance, allowing one side of my lips to curve upward. I was rewarded with Bella's smile—close to a grin, actually, and in that moment, had my heart the capability of beating, it surely would have stopped at the sight. She was completely enamoring.

A wall fell between us in that moment; I could physically feel it crumble through the cracks in the air between us and the connection that ignited was powerfully overwhelming. I gasped, and so did she. My eyes met hers; they were widened in shock, as I was sure my own must have been. Thankfully, we had just arrived at her home, and I pulled to the curb, throwing my car in park and turning to just stare at her, soak her in amidst my awed stupor.

Bella's reaction to our strange and wonderful moment was not one that I had expected. Her eyes were still connected with mine, and she simply raised one hand, fingers splayed in the air that was so magically filled with invisible dancing fairies and sparkles of mystery. It appeared as though she were reaching for me, but stopped half-way between our bodies. My eyes broke away from her own to stare at her pale, delicate hand. Her skin, nearly as light as my own, called to my being, and I raised my opposite hand slowly, measuring my control so as not to hurt her or even startle her.

Our hands, palms and fingers, aligned, and their flesh connected, enticing yet one more gasp from each of us. My eyes locked onto hers; my breath accelerated, though my lungs needed no oxygen. Her shoulders rose and fell with her own quickened breathing, and time stopped. My mind, usually on a great number of things in just one moment, also ceased, and all that existed was Bella, her beautiful, brown eyes, her warmth, her constant, albeit slightly fast heartbeat—the only keeper of the passing moments.

After quite some time that could have been minutes or hours, she blinked. "I..." she cleared her throat into the deafening silence. "I should go inside," she whispered.

I nodded. "Be safe tonight."

The look of curiosity again crossed her features as our hands lowered in unison, as if they were one and belonging to the same body, and finally broke apart. My skin immediately missed her warmth. Another whisper fell from her lips. "I will."

I studied her face one more time, my eyes digging deeply into hers, searching for answers to questions I couldn't put into words—not even in my own mind, my own consciousness.

"I'll see you Monday, Edward."

Monday. Two days without Bella. It was a ludicrous fear that arose within me at that moment. I'd gone without seeing her for the entirety of my existence, spent a week purposefully avoiding her, and after one day full of continuous, altering moments in my life, I didn't want to leave her—I didn't want her to go out with him, didn't want her alone with him, didn't want her with _anyone_ else.

That thought broke my trance. How would I survive the remaining years of her life if I didn't want her to be with anyone, if she would never be allowed any happiness? It was clear to me that she was meant to be in my life and I, hers. As Alice had stated, the forces were simply too great to ignore or defy. Maybe that force was Marie, fate, or a strange combination of the two. I remembered little about my human life, and even less about the woman I'd pledged my undying love to, but I owed it to her to keep Bella safe, to do my best to ensure that she had a long, healthy, happy life—the life that Marie was robbed of. I would force the strange jealousies down deep inside of me and let Bella be happy. It was my purpose. My destiny. My gift and memorial to the love I would never again see or feel.

I smiled at the girl before me. "Have fun tonight, Bella." For reasons unbeknownst to myself, I leaned close to her, brushing my lips ever-so-lightly against her cheek. It flared with red and heat, and I quickly withdrew, fighting to keep my monster locked away. I smiled at her, and she fumbled with the door handle, unable to grip onto it.

"Stay," I said softly, exiting the car and walking around it at human speed to open the door for her. She blushed furiously again, causing the fire to consume my lungs and throat once again. I held back the wince and forced another smile as I offered my hand to help her out.

"Thank you." Her voice was gentle, soft and sweeter than the smell of her blood. She reached into her pocket, retrieving a set of keys and offering them to me gingerly.

I had nearly forgotten the promise that I made to Charlie about Bella's car and smiled at her again, feeling strange and weightless as I took the proffered mess of keys from her. "I'll have Alice drop it off after school. Bye, Bella. Have a good weekend."

She nodded and watched me as I climbed back into the Volvo. With one last glance and the best smile I could offer, I waved and drove away, focusing on my rear view mirror as she watched me leave. I felt dizzy and euphoric and more alive than I had ever felt before. It was as if the day and the meeting of Bella had brought with it the purpose of my existence, the meaning of it all, and I felt so free. The chains that had held me down, the intense longing and searching and pain...they were gone, and I didn't understand it, but I knew that I now had a mission. It was my purpose to keep Bella safe, to keep her happy, to help her have the wonderful life that Marie wanted her to have.

I still didn't understand the connection; I didn't know why Marie chose Bella or what connection the two of them had, but it didn't matter, because I knew my purpose, and that was enough. It would be a challenge and a mighty struggle to keep my emotions in check. Without a doubt, the powerful tug that my soul felt toward Bella could so easily morph into strong emotions, desires, and once those took root in my being, they would never again leave. I would be permanently altered, permanently a new man.

My mind drifted toward Bella's date. I knew without a doubt that somewhere, walking this earth, there had to be someone good enough for a girl such as she. Mike Newton was not, would never be, it. I sighed in frustration.

"Edward."

Startled and unthinking, I glanced around the car. Of course no one was there with me—was I starting to hallucinate yet again?

"Edward."

This time, with the honey voice calling me, echoing whispers into thin air, it took me with it as my vision and concentration disappeared. I pulled the car to the side of the road.

_We were walking down the brick street from our fathers' offices, back home again. Her arm was laced through mine, and her face glowed with pleasure. _

_Marie had always been my closest friend. While my pals from school thought it odd to be so close to a girl, I'd never second guessed it. We'd been friends since she began toddling, following me around to every place I would venture. We'd always been inseparable. _

_Recently, though, Marie had changed. I couldn't put my finger on it, exactly. It was the way her skin glowed when she blushed with excitement or shyness. It was the new sparkle in her eye. It was the feminine changes to her body that I tried not to notice, tried not to look at or think about. I was a gentleman, after all, and she...she was Marie, my best friend._

"_Edward, I have got to tell you what happened at school today," she gushed. I'd finished school one year prior to her and had immediately taken a position in the law firm of my father's, and hers. She'd taken to walking to the office after school, and I accompanied her home after I finished my tasks at work. I looked forward to our routine and to seeing her every single day._

_I smiled at her, noting the way the sun's rays shone from her soft, chestnut hair. "What happened?"_

"_Michael Anderson invited me to the spring dance! Can you believe that?" Marie's tone suggested that she herself couldn't believe it, while I struggled with a surge of anger and betrayal. Her innocent eyes looked up at my face as I stopped walking, and her expression fell to one of sadness. I instantly felt bad for putting it there._

"_He did?" was all I could manage to respond with. _

_She frowned slightly as she nodded, her uncertainty masking her every beautiful feature._

_Beautiful? Marie? Yes, I decided. She was beautiful. Quite beautiful. And he had seen it. Michael Anderson had seen it before I had. I wanted to kick myself._

"_Do you like him, Marie?"_

_We'd stopped walking. I looked into her eyes and she into mine. We studied one another in silence as something between us morphed, evolved. She pulled her bottom lip between her perfect set of teeth. I'd never noticed just how pink those lips were, had never stopped to look at them, to notice them, to see them in that way._

_Her gaze held onto mine. "He's..." She hesitated, looking for words. "He's nice enough."_

_Again we shared a long, silent stare. I subconsciously licked my lips and slowly, excruciatingly slowly, let my hand raise from my side and to her beautifully blushed cheek. "He's not good enough for you," I whispered._

_Significance settled heavily in the air around us as the traffic and people and houses all fell away, and it was just us. _

"_How do you know that, Edward?" Her soft brown eyes pierced my soul._

"_Because I know you, Marie. I know you here," I took her hand in mind and placed it onto my chest, right on top of my heart. With amazing clarity, I realized that it was a heart that beat only for her. I continued, my voice a weak sound in my own ears. "Because I know you have the sweetest heart and the most beautiful smile. Because your laugh is more than just a laugh, it's sunshine and air. Because..." I paused as tears fell from her eyes, and I softly swiped them away with my thumb. "I know that because I love you. You're the only girl for me, Marie, and I pray to God that I'm the only man for you."_

_Her wide and surprised eyes held so fiercely onto my own, and I thought I would split in two. I wanted her to say it. I wanted her to feel the same. My heart beat wildly in my chest._

_When she finally spoke, eyes still attached to my gaze, her words came in a choked whisper. "You love me? I thought...after everything and." She stopped for a moment, searching our connected stare once again. "I thought you would only ever see me as your friend."_

_I shook my head, feeling the most intense sensation I had ever felt as even my blood cried of my love for her. How had I not seen it before then? "No," was all I could reply._

_Marie swallowed, her throat bobbing with the action, stirring something within me that I wouldn't let myself give attention to or focus on. "I love you, too, Edward. It's always been you," she whispered into the twilight._

_My arms wrapped around her vigorously, and we stood in that embrace for some time, reveling in this strange new sensation, in the immense connection that had just exploded between us like fireworks and melded us together in a new bond, a strong and everlasting bond._

As quickly as the scene had overpowered my mind, it disappeared again, and I grieved its absence. My soul mourned for her—I fell just a little more in love with her with each and every memory that flashed through my mind. Now more than ever, I loathed my existence. I wanted her back, wanted to wrap my arms—human arms—around her and hold her tight, to marry her and make all of our dreams come true. Why had we been robbed of that?

Anger ignited within me. Why did Carlisle save me and not her? Why not her? If anything, it should have been her _instead_ of me. Something so good and pure and lovely should not have been taken from this world—taken from me. Is that why she wanted me to protect Bella? Because Bella was all that Marie had been? Because she needed to be treasured and preserved?

But there were things that even I was incapable of protecting her from. I wouldn't be able to save Bella from strange human pandemics or natural disasters or car accidents or—God, there were so many things that could take her fragile life, as earlier that day had easily proved. She was so vulnerable.

It was at that terrifying moment of revelation that I saw him driving toward her house, and my jealousy and instinct to protect her lit like a flame on gasoline. I turned the car and parked a block away from Bella's house, just as Newton arrived in his beat-up Camry. My greater than perfect vision could make out the detail of his khaki pants and gray sweater as he strolled cockily up to her door.

Then she opened the door to him, and the sight of her blew me away. She was amazingly beautiful, dressed semi-casually as he was. She wore dark jeans and a blue blouse that set off the delicacy of her skin and her blush, and she was beautiful. She smiled at him. At _him._ My hands clenched against the steering wheel, and it gave way under the pressure. I inhaled a deep breath of air I didn't need in an attempt to calm myself, and loosened my grip slightly.

He hadn't even opened the door for her. Schmuck.

I pulled out onto the street and followed them at a safe distance, driving agonizingly slow. I didn't trust him, and I was bound to keep her safe, protected, secure. At the horribly slow pace, I followed them to Port Angeles. He took her to the pizzeria just outside of town, and I parked, and I waited, and I worried. I used all of my focus to single out his mind.

_God she looks so hot in those tight jeans, I just want to—_

"Mike?"

_Mike. Oh. Mike. She's talking to me again. _"Huh?"

_Bella's smile was forced as she looked him over. _His mind didn't notice that_. _"I was just asking you what your favorite pizza is?"

_Pizza? Oh, yeah. I'd have you as a topping any day, Bella. _"Oh." He was just as dumb outwardly as he was inwardly tonight. I shook my head. Surely she would see through him? "I guess pepperoni, maybe? I don't know, I'll eat anything." I cringed_, _and Bella didn't appear too impressed either.

His mind was devoid of lyrical thought as it undressed her slowly, right there at their small table in the corner. I was livid. I couldn't sit still any longer, and I prayed that Bella would forgive me for what I was about to do.

I dashed into the pizzeria and then took a moment to calm myself and appear as though I'd just casually strolled in. I even asked for my own table.

As the hostess led me back toward the table where Bella sat across from Mike, I allowed my gaze to meet hers. I was relieved and indescribably euphoric when she smiled—it was a grin, and it was one of her own happiness and relief.

"Edward," she said cheerily, and I soaked it in, every intonation in her voice that couldn't be heard by human ears; I relished the sounds, loved them.

_Edward?_ Mike was startled as he turned around to face me and groaned within his mind. At least he had the decency to control himself in that regard. _Oh, god. That's right. She has a thing for Cullen. Why's he talking to her? I thought he hated her...but then today he did save her. Time to step up the game, Mikey._

As his thoughts spewed from his mind like vomit, his hand slid forward to grab onto Bella's, and it took every ounce of control I had mastered over the last century not to rip him limb from limb. "Oh, hey Edward." His voice a mask of relaxation and confidence.

A master at feigning myself, I plastered a smile on my face as I clapped his shoulder. "Mike! Bella!" I turned from him to her beautiful face. "How are you feeling, Bella? Okay?"

Something flashed within her gorgeous, sharp eyes, a familiar mischief that I had once known very well. It was familiar; it was a precursor, and I had seen it in action before. I couldn't stop to ponder that realization before she touched her hand to her forehead. _Here we go, Bella. Show me what you've got,_ I thought with a strange mix of pride and anticipation.

_Huh. Maybe she hit her head today and really wasn't up for this date. The chief did seem pretty concerned about her going out tonight._

"I was feeling fine until just a few minutes ago." Her eyes darted from mine to Mike's, and admittedly, I was impressed with that expression on her face. It seemed real and honest and true. "But now I'm actually a little light-headed."

_Oh, man. You have got to be kidding me. And I told all of the guys I was going to get some of that hot—_

I couldn't bear for him to finish that thought. "You do? Perhaps you need to have my father take another look for you? I don't want you to have problems later."

Bella frowned and nodded; I was giddy inside. "Yes." She shot Mike a regretful glance. "I'm so sorry Mike, would you mind if I had Edward take me to see Dr. Cullen? I don't think I'm up for the movie, after all."

_Damn it. You have got to be kidding me!_ He repeated his previous thoughts in my head, which amused me. I was slightly angered that he showed no concern for her in his thoughts, only in his facial expressions.

"Oh, sure Bella. You probably should make sure everything is okay."

She nodded. "Thanks so much for the pizza," she said in a genuinely sweet voice.

_Pizza in exchange for what? Certainly not what I had planned for the night. That asshole, Cullen._

"Anytime, Bella."

I played my part and helped her stand and put her coat on and then steadied her as we walked out the door. Once outside and in the parking lot, away from the windows, we ran, I at human speed. I opened her door, and once we were both inside, I sped several blocks before parking by the pier. I looked at Bella's bright red face, her eyes shining with mischief as she breathed heavily, catching her breath. Once our eyes connected we both burst into laughter. Tears fell from the corners of her eyes as the waves of humor finally subsided, and I was awed by her beauty and the fact that I hadn't laughed—not once in all of my time as a vampire had I actually laughed so hard that I could feel the mirth.

I was breathless as well, which didn't make much logical sense, but as our breaths huffed and steadied in the quiet car, I was attacked by an overwhelming and monstrous need to wrap her in my arms and kiss her like she had never been kissed before. Taken completely off guard, I tensed, closed my eyes and willed the urging away.

"Edward?" Her beautiful voice filled the space surrounding us.

Slowly, I opened my eyes to her concerned face, and I smiled at it, appreciating it, loving her for it.

Love? _No_, I would not do this. It was not an option. "Sorry, got a bit distracted," I choked out as her curious eyes looked at me for the millionth time today.

I drove her home, and we were mostly silent. My melancholy had ruined the pure, unadulterated joy we both had felt in snubbing Mike Newton at the pizzeria. We pulled up to her house, and she turned to me.

"Are you okay? I'm not sure what hap—"

I didn't allow her to finish. "Yes, Bella. I'm fine." I smiled to prove it. It worked nicely, for she returned my smile and, after a moment, it laced with a sheepish expression.

"Thanks for saving me tonight. That was quite easily one of the more awkward dinners in my life. He didn't say anything!"

I chuckled. "His mind was otherwise engaged."

She eyed me with that curious look that she'd mastered and opened her mouth to speak but stopped herself, shaking her head. "If you say so, Edward. See you Monday? Unless we just 'randomly' bump into one another again?" She'd actually used air quotes, and I laughed.

"Monday it is," I said as I exited the car and opened her door for her.

She stood next to me, her smile lighting the night around us. "Thanks for the ride home."

I nodded in response. "Goodnight, Bella."

"'Night," she said softly, turning to make her way up the walk to the porch.

I watched her until she was at the door. She unlocked it and shifted the knob, turning to give me a small wave. I smiled at her and returned it, and she escaped into the confines of her home.

As I drove back to my house, thoughts of Bella swarmed in my head. I wouldn't allow myself to think about the emotions that she brought alive in me from the graveyard that had been my past. My family had immersed themselves in their nightly rituals—something I didn't want to be around for. I jumped out my bedroom window on the third floor and ran. I didn't think about where I was or where I was going, I just ran and thrilled at the speed. When the familiar scent of Bella filled my senses, I paused to take in my surroundings. Her house was just half a mile down the hill and out of the forest. Without my permission, my feet carried me to her yard, and before I realized where I was, I had creaked open her window and wedged my body into her bedroom.

Her beautiful brown hair was splayed all around her head against her lavender sheets, and the sheer force of her splendor left me unnaturally awed. Even in her sleep, her being called to mine. I took in a shudder of a breath in the quiet air. Her room permeated the smell of Bella. Thirst and pain pawed at my throat as the monster struggled to get free, but there was a greater force at play. Never in my entire existence had I thought I would come across a force greater than the beast within me. Whatever this was, whatever strange ties that connected me to Bella, they were stronger, monumentally more phenomenal and against logic and reason.

She sighed, her fist nestled under her cheek, and I so badly wanted to touch her, but refrained. "Edward, I won't get cold," she mumbled, and I was startled for a moment, staring at her, her eyes still closed, body still lax in sleep. I chuckled softly. She was dreaming about me. "But you promised...we could make a snowman..." I shook my head, smiling at her complete beauty. I watched her, and she mumbled, sometimes coherently and sometimes not. The sun rose, and Charlie left for work. I left shortly after him, not wanting her to be frightened upon waking and finding me in her room—somewhere I probably shouldn't have been. I looked at her one last time and sighed, jumping out of her window and running home. I needed to hunt—I knew that—but the thought of being far from Bella when she was so very accident-prone made me nervous.

"She'll be fine." I was annoyed that I was startled by her presence. Alice met me at the driveway to our home. I studied her face for a moment.

"You're sure?"

Her grin was wide and full of knowledge. "I'm sure. Go with the guys and hunt."

After another moment, I nodded. "Alright." It would be such a long weekend, but with any luck, more memories would return. As painful as they sometimes were, they made me feel more alive than I'd ever felt before. I was falling in love with Marie all over again, and this time I would remember what it had felt like.

***

**A/N: Several little snippets: **

****As usual, my beta JadeMoon is so great--big thanks to her!**

****I am doing a new collaboration story with Clurrabella entitled The War Inside. Please go check it out! We are so excited about it! Link is on my profile :-)**

****Also, check out the Esme's Exotic Ecstasy Contest by kikiwhore! The contest info is on www (dot) fanfiction (dot) net/u/2079696/kikiwhore. Check it out! Write a one-shot, read the juicy entries!**

****And finally, check out my blog and come follow me on twitter! (links to both on my profile)**


End file.
